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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the development status of this plugin?

Add-Meta-Tags has been deprecated. It is no longer supported. It is no longer tested with new WordPress releases. Using it in production is not recommended.

It is strongly suggested to migrate to other more modern and better maintained plugins.

At the time of writing, there are no major bugs. Provided that the WordPress API does not change soon, you have the time to experiment with other plugins and plan your migration.

I have a question/idea about the plugin! Can I contact you?

Please, don't. All inquiries about the plugin are silently discarded. I no longer provide support and, also, I'm not interested in any idea or proposal.

The source code of the plugin is released under a permissive open source license. You may use the source code according to the licensing terms.

Is the documentation on this wiki up to date?

It is possible that the documentation, especially the parts about the customization of the plugin, contain outdated information. Fixing any mistakes and making sure that all information is up to date would require a lot of effort and time. Since the plugin is now deprecated, there are no plans to work on the documentation as well. I highly recommend to start experimenting with more modern plugins.

I found the source code of this plugin on a third party web site. Should I trust it?

Please understand, that, due to the nature of Free Open Source Software, the source code of any such project may be freely distributed from any web site on the internet. Obviously, you should never trust source code you find on third party web sites. Please check the Downloads page for more information about downloading the source code.

I want to move my data to another plugin!

Add-Meta-Tags stores its data in WordPress Custom Fields. Detailed information about them can be found in the Data Storage page.

In order to migrate the Add-Meta-Tags data to other plugins all you need to do is rename the relevant field names. This can be done by directly issuing SQL statements at the MySQL shell (see example).

For a more user-friendly way, you can use the SEO-Data-Transporter plugin. However, a small modification of the source code of this plugin is required in order to be able to read the Add-Meta-Tags fields. Lines 86-90 (or somewhere around there) of the SEO-Data-Transporter's plugin.php file should be:

'Add Meta Tags' => array(
    'Custom Doctitle' => '_amt_title',
    'META Description' => '_amt_description',
    'META Keywords' => '_amt_keywords',
),

This will let SEO-Data-Transporter read the custom title / description / keywords.

For more specific information and help, please consult the SEO-Data-Transporter support forums.

In case you want to migrate the data to plugins not supported by SEO-Data-Transporter, then, please ask the developer of the plugin you plan to use about how to rename the custom fields in the database.

Can the source code of this plugin be reused?

The Add-Meta-Tags plugin is Free Open Source Software. The source code is released under the terms of the Apache License version 2 and the NOTICE file that ships with the plugin. Therefore, you may reuse it according to the included terms and conditions.

Please, keep in mind the following key notes:

  • All copyright notices must remain in tact.
  • The name of my plugin must not appear in the name of derivative works.
  • Any derivative works must not be presented to users as being endorsed by me.

Also, please do not contact me for permission to use the source code outside the scope of the Apache License version 2 and the NOTICE file. Such permission is not granted under any circumstances.

For any questions related to the licensing terms and conditions, please consult a professional, as I cannot provide any help about them.

Does this plugin respect my privacy?

Absolutely. Add-Meta-Tags does not collect any data about the way the plugin is used by its users. Moreover, Add-Meta-Tags does not make any HTTP requests and does not use (or attempt to use) any resources stored remotely. Any statistical information about how you use the plugin is not in the developer's interests. Furthermore, the study of any such data would not be possible due to lack of time. The entire source code is publicly available for review.

The text I add in the Site-wide Meta Tags box appears at the top of the page!

The Site-wide meta tags field in the plugin settings page and also the full meta tags field in the Metadata box in the post editing screen expect the full HTML code of meta and link HTML elements. For example:

<meta name="google-site-verification" content="1234567890" />
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="1234567890" />
<meta name="robots" content="noimageindex" />
<meta property="fb:admins" content="1234" />
<meta property="fb:app_id" content="4321" />

The data that is entered in these fields is added in the <head> section of the web page.

If you enter plain text in the aforementioned fields, it is going to be displayed at the top of the page as this is how a web browser interprets plain text located in the <head> section.

Moreover, for security reasons, any other HTML element that you may enter in these fields is stripped by built-in WordPress sanitization functions that Add-Meta-Tags uses. By entering unsupported HTML elements in these fields, it is possible to end up with plain text being displayed at the top of the page.

The plugin will not warn you about any such mistakes. It is your responsibility to enter the supported HTML elements. The integrated HELP contains more information and examples.

I see duplicate meta tags in the HTML source!

Add-Meta-Tags does not generate duplicate meta tags. Moreover, it does not check the HTML head area for duplicate meta tags. This is the responsibility of the user. Please make sure no meta tags are hard-coded into your theme (usually the `header.php` template). Also, if you use multiple plugins that generate the same types of metadata, please make sure that similar features, eg Twitter Cards metadata, are not enabled in multiple plugins.

The blog title appears in the <title> HTML element even if a custom title has been set!

Most probably this issue is related to your theme. Please try to reproduce the same behavior using one of the default themes. If it is reproducible, please let us know about it in the forums.

Metadata validation tools show the error [Error: Missing required field "updated"]!

This issue is related to Microformats metadata, which is hard-coded into the theme. It is not related to Schema.org microdata and also not related to Add-Meta-Tags.

Google Structured Data Validation Tool reports missing attributes for Youtube videos. Why don't you fix it?

Add-Meta-Tags generates metadata for embedded media based on the data that is available locally by WordPress. It never requests further information, even if the various validators require additional attributes in order to validate the metadata that is generated by the plugin. Requesting this information on each visit would be inefficient. On the contrary, requesting this information from the oEmbed provider and storing it locally for later use by the plugin has been considered in the past, but unfortunately such a mechanism will not be implemented, since it is WordPress' job to do this. Please ask the WordPress developers to store more information about embedded media, so we can use it to generate all the required metadata attributes.

My meta tags do not show up!

Please, check if your theme's header.php file contains the following required piece of code:

<?php wp_head(); ?>

If this is missing, contact the theme author. Also, please read the Requirements page.

My meta tags show up twice!

The description and keywords meta tags are most probably already hard-coded into your theme's header.php file. Please contact the theme author to report this issue.

I insert HTML code in the 'Full Meta Tags' box, but it keeps disappearing!

For security reasons, only <meta> and <link> HTML elements are allowed in this box.

The custom title I set does not show up!

The custom title you set in the relevant field of the Metadata metabox or using the title templates may not make it to the final HTML document if another plugin or theme changes it after Add-Meta-Tags.

If you want Add-Meta-Tags to make the final change to the title, you have to change the priority of the title filters and make it higher. By default, the title filters run with priority 9999. To change it you can add the following code snippet in the functions.php file of the theme or in a custom plugin.

// First, remove the Add-Meta-Tags filters that affect the title.
remove_filter('document_title_parts', 'amt_custom_title_tag', 9999, 1);
remove_filter('wp_title', 'amt_custom_title_tag', 9999, 1);

// Then re-add them with a higher priority
add_filter('document_title_parts', 'amt_custom_title_tag', 1000000, 1);
if ( apply_filters('amt_enable_legacy_title_support', true) ) {
    add_filter('wp_title', 'amt_custom_title_tag', 1000000, 1);
}