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4.0.3

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Google Search has a new bug in their parser, which causes pages to be deindexed unintentionally when a specific combination of robots-settings are used. To work around this bug, we changed how the recently introduced copyright directive settings work.

For more information, see our KB entry on why the Maximum Image Preview Size setting may now be ignored.

We also fixed three bugs and added minor improvements.

Detailed log

> View code changes.
> View closed issues.

For everyone

  • Improved:
    • Accessibility:
      • Focussing an SEO Bar item will now add a high-contrast inner-ring.
      • You can now dismiss notices with your keyboard, by hitting the return key.
    • Styling:
      • In response to the WP v5.3 update, we rounded the tabs on the settings page. That’s it. The SEO Framework was already compatible with WordPress v5.3.
      • We added support for “info” notice types. They have a blue border.
      • The dismiss icon is now centered better for most notifications.
    • PHP: We alleviated one deprecation notice with the upcoming PHP v7.4 update.
    • Performance: The Google and Bing sitemap pinging endpoints now enforce HTTPS. So, we updated the pinging URLs to prevent a redirect.
    • Other: On upgrade, the plugin now tests for the WordPress version for compatibility, instead of the WordPress database version.
    • Compatibility: The primary term selection for WooCommerce’s products is now respected for both the page URL and WC product breadcrumbs output.
  • Other:
    • For the copyright directive brought in v4.0.2:
      • An option for videos was wrongly described as “None, disallow preview”; it should’ve been “None, still image only”.
      • The output was done in a non-Google way; yet, due to standards, it was still effective as intended. We exchanged the equals-sign for a colon.
      • The output seems to affect other metatags, such as the description metatag. As such, we added a warning under the text-snippet limit option.
      • We confined the behavior of the “none” option for the restrictive image directive because there’s a bug on Google Search that makes it conflict with nofollow and noarchive.
        • Because this affects your rights, we have added a warning underneath the option.
        • For more information, see this post and this tweet.
        • Thank you, Carl, for helping us find this bug!
  • Fixed:
    • Empty terms can now be asserted for post type support again. With that, for example, redirects from empty categories works again.
    • On RTL-enabled websites, the top-save buttons are aligned correctly again.
    • Nested markdown now works in Extension Manager v2.2.

For translators

  • Added:
    • New translations are now available.
  • Updated:
    • We amended a few strings.
    • The POT translation file.

For developers

  • the_seo_framework()->convert_markdown() now handles nested strong and em conversions graciously.