Add a "Caveats" section for the Head Tags plugin

[juanmaguitar]

There are some archives/pages of WordPress that aren't supported by the Head Tags plugin because they don't have an entity in the REST API. Although we already are specifying the entities that are supported, we thought it would be nice to list also the ones that aren't. These are the ones we have in mind:

• Date archives
• Search pages
• 404 pages
• Format archives: It seems something old from WordPress that is not used anymore. It's not even supported by the 2020 PHP theme.

Although they are not supported by the plugin right now, a workaround hardcoding it in Frontity it's pretty easy. They just have to add the title they want in the date or 404 pages.

---

• I've been testing the WP SEO plugin for Aleteia, two version of it: the latest one in Alley's GitHub - 0.13.0 (https://github.com/alleyinteractive/wp-seo) and the one in the vip-svn they shared - 0.10.0 (https://vip-svn.wordpress.com/plugins/wp-seo/).These are the settings of the plugin, you can change the title, description and meta keywords for most of them. You can set up a default value using variables like Post - #title# and apart from that, at each specific post, page, category... customize it if you want to override it. I've checked the ones that are supported by the current status of our plugin/package.

These are the things that are left (we'll have to consider with Aleteia if it makes sense to support them from Frontity or suggest a workaround):

• Format archives: I didn't know what was that in WordPress. It's kind of similar to CPT or ACF. Inside a post you can select the Post Format (video, image, standard...) and from there you can go to .../type/video and see an archive of all the post with the video format. Anyway, it's something that the theme has to support, and not even the 2020 theme is supporting it. It seems that is not used anymore. It doesn't seem to have support for the REST API neither.
• Date archives: Right now, it's not using any head tags, not even the ones included in the homepage.
• Search pages: I think there are two issues here. Frontity doesn't work with /search/query right? It's the url they use as example. Apart from that, with ?s=query, it's getting the head tags of the homepage. The title, that is the only setting you can configure in this case, could be easily hardcoded in Frontity.
• 404 pages: Right now, it's not using any head tags. The title, that is the only setting you can configure in this case, could be easily hardcoded in Frontity.

For these last cases (search and 404), if we don't want it to be hardcoded in Frontity, I guess we'd need to add REST API support for that settingsand get that from the Frontity package.

I still have to open the Feature Discussion, but I'd like to know your opinion, maybe after talking to Aleteia, of what we should support or not.

• I’ve never seen format archives to be honest.
• I guess Date Archives head tags are not supported by the Head Tags plugin yet because they don’t have an entity in the REST API. Is that right @david? Maybe they can use the home tags (type “post”).
• Hardcoding the title of date archives, 404 pages and search pages seems about right. Another workaround would be to inject the <title> using the Theme Bridge.

What is not working right now?

What do you mean with what is not working? All the settings of the WP SEO plugin are working excepting the ones mentioned (format archives, date archives, search pages and 404 pages).

ohhh, ok thanks

then I guess it’s working because none of those work in Yoast SEO or AIOSP

Which one is the "Format Archive"?

the others are those cases that our plugin can't handle

so yes, it's working

So I guess:

• We don’t need a FD for WPSEO
• Maybe we need to add those caveats to the head-tags docs so people is aware

What do you think? (edited)

In the docs it's specified which type of entities come with the head_tags field, but not those that don't. I think is a good idea to add a note explicitly mention those types.

https://docs.frontity.org/frontity-plugins/rest-api-head-tags#entities-with-head-tags

there

We could create a section called “Caveats”

(I’m not sure if that is the better name, we can ask Michael)

And do a list of things that are not working in general and then the things that are not working in each SEO plugin

Hey

I want to write to Aleteia to catch up and see how they're doing, but first I'd like to understand the state of this

Can you help me?

From all the settings of the WP SEO plugin, everything works except the ones I mention before, but they are cases that the plugin can't handle so we can suggest a workaround if Aleteia is using them:

• Format archives: It seems something old from WordPress that is not used anymore. It's not even supported by the 2020 PHP theme and it doesn't seem to have support for the REST API neither.
• Date archives: They don't have an Entity in the REST API. The title could be easily hardcoded in Frontity.
• Search pages: Here we would need to know if they use the format /search/query ot the query ?s=query. . Anyway, it's not supported by the plugin. The title could be easily hardcoded in Frontity.
• 404 pages: We can't make it work with the plugin. The title could be easily hardcoded in Frontity.