Changelog

Summarized:

• This is the biggest update so far, with over a hundred noticeable changes and with many functions added to remove repeated calls and replace them with memory stored functions.
• This update of The SEO Framework brings you Feed excerpt generation as well as options to add backlinks in the feed. You can now also add your Pinterest verification code.
• Also, a lot of the WordPress behavior detection and plugin detection has been reworked, improved and has been put to great use within the option pages to eliminate confusion by removing options if they have no effect.
• And last but not least, due to popular demand an extra option has been added to change the Title generation, although it decouples all your pages within your website.
• Oh, and many minor improvements and bug fixes have also been put into effect, including a few more important WooCommerce shop page fixes and a proud-to-be-of 20% overall performance improvement.

SEO Tip of the Update:

• If you are writing blog posts, take a look at the rising trends at Google Trends before it’s all over the internet.
• Write about any of the trends once in a while, and if the trend kicks off your website might just be exposed to many people.

For everyone:

• Added: Pinterest Analytics verification field.
• Added: Feed option in the new Feed Settings metabox tab to convert the feed content into to an excerpt (400 characters) to counter scrapers and to prevent duplicated content issues. Default enabled on new installations.
• Added: Feed option to add a non-followed backlink to the feed content to counter scrapers and bad links. Default enabled on new installations.
• Added: The custom excerpt field (if available) is now taken into account before generating one from the content.
• Added: Title additions options, which allows you to remove the blogname from all pages (except the home page, which has its own option already). This option is only available to themes which are doing it right. Default disabled and recommended not to be used, not even if the SEO data transfer went otherwise than expected.
• Added: The custom in-post titles now also listen to the new Title addition options.
• Added: The dynamic title additions placeholder has also been put into effect when the Title Additions Location has been set in reverse order. This effectively also eliminates confusion.
• Added: Dynamic title additions left/right options based on being enabled or disabled.
• Added: PHP 5.2 compatibility, which is actually very much outdated. PHP 5.2 will henceforth be (syntax-wise) supported until at least March 2016. Please stay updated!
• Added: Subtle sitemap plugin detection notification on SEO Settings Page. If a sitemap plugin is detected, the option will be removed from view and will be replaced with the notification.
• Added: The sitemap detection will also remove the Sitemap ping and timestamp submenus and their options.
• Added: Robots.txt file detection. If a robots.txt file is detected in the website’s root folder the options to change it will be removed.
• Added: sitemap.xml file detection. If a sitemap.xml file is detected in the website’s root folder the options to output it will be removed.
• Added: Subtle OG plugin detection notification on SEO Settings Page.
• Added: The generation comments within the Sitemap output are now translatable.
• Added: The plugin usage comments within the HTML output are now translatable.
• Added: Translation comments aimed at front-end translations, translators can now easily find high-priority translations through the “Front-end” filter keyword.
• Added: Removal of WordPress Core adjacent post rel links, this is now managed by The SEO Framework.
• Added: Implemented, but left deactivated, the SEO bar in the Post Edit screens. You can enable this through a filter, found at The SEO Framework filters.
• Added: Ultimate Member profile titles compatibility.
• Added: A lot more sitemap plugins can be detected.
• Improved: All archives get the archive title correctly.
• Improved: When no excerpt can be created, the social description will be the same as the regular description again, instead of being empty.
• Improved: Sped up breadcrumb generation time when no Post parents are found.
• Improved: All single sentence html hover titles have no more dots at the end to maintain consistency.
• Improved: Navigation tabs in the SEO Setting page now don’t overflow anymore in the Social Meta Settings metabox.
• Improved: Greatly reduced non-minified CSS file size by converting spaces into tabs.
• Improved: Plugin Home link in the Plugin Activation page is now updated to HTTPS.
• Improved: Various comparison checks are sped up.
• Improved: Added trimming of spaces around the blogname and title in the Title and Description.
• Improved: The character counter and settings changes is much more responsive and now listens to more browser interactions.
• Improved: Greatly reduced sitemap generation time by caching more variables.
• Changed: Small textual change to make things more clear in the Description Settings.
• Fixed: Custom Canonical URL now works again when using WPMUdev Domain Mapping.
• Fixed: Firefox checkbox colors are now also visible through shadows, when FireFox officially supports checkbox styling (which has been in question for almost 8 years!) it will be removed.
• Fixed: Firefox separator radio button margins were doubled.
• Fixed: Firefox unnecessary white space above separator buttons.
• Fixed: Sitemap lastmod dates could be in an incorrect syntax due to WordPress translations.
• Fixed: Some other plugins pop up annoying notices over the controls within the SEO Framework (outside of their plugin domain!). They’ve been pushed down. Because of this fix the title is also pushed in-line to go beneath the Screen Options on tablets, a welcome side effect.
• Fixed: og:locale content when a translation plugin has incorrectly changed the locale code of WordPress.
• Fixed: Saving Draft after SEO Settings change gave an unnecessary and incorrect unsaved data popup notification.
• Fixed: Sitemap URL Location missed a slash with special permalink settings.
• Fixed: When using WordPress version below 4.5, when the Home Title location lost its input as a result from metabox dragging, the option is now properly falling back to its previous value rather than the global Title Settings value.
• Fixed: Robots.txt URL Location missed a slash with special permalink settings.
• Fixed: WPML Negotiation Type miscalculation, Different Domain Language URL format was treated as the subdirectory URL format.
• Fixed: Invalid HTML around the Local Search Settings question mark in the Inpost Metabox.
• Fixed: Twitter card type wasn’t properly sanitized. This didn’t cause a security issue as the option value is properly escaped before it’s sent to the database and on output. Hurray for Framework.
• Fixed: Settings radio boxes now contain a second fall back to default if empty value is and was given.
• Fixed: Missing characters at the end of the title when the theme is using an html entity that has characters like the end of the title name.
• Fixed: Day date archives cache keys could’ve been too long on old WordPress installations.
• Fixed: WooCommerce main shop page now listens to all the assigned page SEO settings.
• Fixed: WooCommerce main shop page description title is now correct.
• Fixed: When a static front page has been assigned, the Posts Page can now listen to the redirect option.
• Fixed: Temporarily added lines back (which were removed in WordPress 4.4) beneath the option tabs in the metaboxes on mobile screens.
• Fixed: Dynamic Title Placeholder input text visual glitch when the input text was overflowing.
• Fixed: Miscalculation in multibyte string positioning when using non UTF-8 characters and when the server didn’t support mbstring. This could’ve caused a miscalculation for the title when the theme was doing it wrong.
• Updated: POT file.

For developers:

• Added: New filters.
• Added: New Class: AutoDescription_Feed within feed.class.php.
• Added: More filterable image arguments.
• Added: Two Image fallback filters.
• Added: Extra title argument to disable sanitation. Requires santition afterwards.
• Added: If the theme you’re using is doing the wp_title() function wrong, the title parameters are now added in a hidden HTML comment (i.e. e.g. <!-- Title diw: | true right -->) in the page footer for developer debugging purposes.
• Added: Sanitation for effectively removing spaces and html tags, s_no_html_space.
• Added: With up to 140 calls in a single load in the admin area, a new cached function has arrived: AutoDescription_PostData::get_blogname(). Effectively reduced RAM usage by 800kB with 100 posts displayed.
• Added: New cached function: AutoDescription_PostData::get_blogdescription().
• Added: New function: AutoDescription_Generate::fetch_locale(), fetches correct Open Graph locale based on WordPress settings or through parameter.
• Added: New cached function: AutoDescription_Detect::can_i_use(). Dump your multidimensional array of functions, classes and constants in this function and it will calculate if they can all be used, which also caches the matches for these checks are quite intensive.
• Added: New cached function: AutoDescription_Detect::is_singular(). Special is_singular check which works on both front-end as backend. This also tells that the WooCommerce Shop page is singular instead of an archive.
• Added: Many more functions, which aren’t important enough to be highlighted.
• Added: post_id filterable argument on AutoDescription_Generate::get_image().
• Added: When The SEO Framework debugger is activated, the screen names are shown at the bottom-right in the admin screens.
• Optimized: Many comparisons have been converted into type sensitive statements, this is less forgiving to erroneous option array filters.
• Changed: Reduced sitemap ping throttle transient name length.
• Changed: When the first parameter of AutoDescription_PostData::get_excerpt_by_id() is filled in, it will now not only escape the attributes, but strip the whole content from its tags and shortcodes.
• Changed: AudoDescription_Generate::description_from_custom_field() can no longer return an array with page for posts data.
• Improved: AutoDescription_PostData::get_excerpt_by_id() now listens more carefully to the first parameter. If it’s not empty, it doesn’t try to fetch the post content.
• Improved: Removed the Generator tag through action instead of filter.
• Improved: Disabled plugin output completely on Preview mode, including the title tag manipulation.
• Improved: AutoDescription_Admin_Init::add_post_state no longer uses global $post.
• Improved: Cleaned up debug messages.
• Updated: Doing it Wrong notice to the current standards.
• Fixed: Unlikely conflict in the default site options and warned site options. This should only have caused a problem if the (protected) warned settings were fetched before admin_init.
• Fixed: Check for error in breadcrumbs is now also applicable for the term fetch, instead of doubling the cat check.
• Fixed: Empty values can now be correctly debugged for value type through the debugger.
• Fixed: Debugger no longer generates an error when parsing boolean values.
• Fixed: Debugger no longer generates an error when fetching a non-existing excerpt on the front page.
• Fixed: PHP Warning on transient generation when displaying multiple CPT on a page.
• Fixed: PHP Fatal error when debugging a taxonomy.
• Fixed: PHP Fatal errors when debugging the sitemap (unrelated fix).
• Removed: Generic debug messages in the sitemap, these caused the sitemap syntax to fail on generation.
• Removed: Doing it Wrong notice in the footer when the theme is outputting the title wrong on WordPress 4.4.0 and lower. This has been exchanged for a small html comment.
• Removed: Genesis check for wp_title as it now supports the much required title tag.
• Removed: IS_HMPL constant check, now only listens to the filter.
• Removed: Override and front-page image arguments as it has been replaced with a more extensive and easier to understand filter.
• Deprecated: AudoDescription_Generate::generate_description_from_id() 2nd argument. Exchanged for escape. 3rd parameter will still work until 2.6.0.
• Deprecated: AudoDescription_Generate::generate_excerpt() 3rd argument. Exchanged for char length. 4th and 5th parameters are also deprecated and will work as max_char_length until 2.6.0.
• Deprecated: AutoDescription_Admin_Init::supported_screens as it isn’t used anymore. This also deprecates the the_seo_framework_supported_screens filter.
• Note: On many places, empty() has been exchanged for type sensitive checks. If you do not wish to use a parameter, always input the default to maintain expected behavior.
• Note: The description excerpt cache version has been bumped to refresh all excerpts.
• Cleaned up code.

Notes:

• I am aware that the GeoDirectory plugin title settings are ignored by this plugin. A compatibility update is planned.