Best practises with custom meta information

joel · 2010-07-04 16:37:00

Hi,

I’ve looked around to get my mind clear about this.

What I need is the possibility to change the Page Title and Meta Description via custom fields for some articles.
If that’s is not possible, Is there a way of doing it “manually” for a number of articles via conditionals in the head-section? For instance <txp:if_article_id….

Please point me in the right direction.

I’ve tride the Rah_metas plugin but I couldn’t make it perform something like this.

Thanks a lot in advance! :)

jsoo · 2010-07-04 17:13:48

<title><txp:if_individual_article>
    <txp:if_custom_field name="custom_title">
        <txp:custom_field name="custom_title" />
    <txp:else />
        <txp:page_title />
    </txp:if_custom_field>
<txp:else />
    <txp:page_title />
</txp:if_individual_article></title>

Something similar would work for the meta description.

joel · 2010-07-04 17:53:53

Thanks for your instant reply. However, that doesn’t seem to work for me. But that is the kind of solution I’d prefer. I also tried to wrap the title attr in asy_wondertag tags. That didn’t work eiter.

net-carver · 2010-07-04 18:00:01

joel

if you are using a recent version of TXP you don’t need asy_wondertags just use single quotes inside the tag attribute you wish to nest. What version of TXP are you using?

joel · 2010-07-04 18:14:36

Ahh that’s good news! It’s the recent 4.2.0

Last edited by joel (2010-07-04 18:15:03)

jsoo · 2010-07-04 18:17:41

joel wrote:

Thanks for your instant reply. However, that doesn’t seem to work for me. But that is the kind of solution I’d prefer. I also tried to wrap the title attr in asy_wondertag tags. That didn’t work eiter.

What title attribute? The title tags I included in my example are just HTML tags, not Txp tags.

Post a tag trace for more help. I haven’t actually tested the code I posted, but I think it should work.

Do you have a custom field named custom_title?

Hi Steve!

joel · 2010-07-04 18:41:54

It was the html-tags I was referring to :)

Yes, I have the custom field name right.
Here is my code (exactly yours except for the field name):

<title><txp:if_individual_article> <txp:if_custom_field name="meta-titel"> <txp:custom_field name="meta-titel" /> <txp:else /> <txp:page_title /> </txp:if_custom_field> <txp:else /> <txp:page_title /> </txp:if_individual_article></title>

Last edited by joel (2010-07-04 18:43:07)

jsoo · 2010-07-04 18:47:25

Just tested it and it worked as expected. What output are you getting? Can you post a tag trace or a link to one?

joel · 2010-07-04 18:55:08

I deactivated some old plugins and than it suddenly works!!!

Thanks so much for your assistance!!! :)))

Last edited by joel (2010-07-04 18:55:22)

GugUser · 2010-07-04 23:20:46

I wrote about the same topic in the german forum

joel · 2010-07-05 11:31:24

Is this possible to assign to a single article on an article list page IE the “landing page”?

I would prefer not using “Sticky” articles

Last edited by joel (2010-07-05 12:12:41)

jsoo · 2010-07-05 14:29:37

Create conditional logic for determining whether or not you’re on a landing page. soo_if_frontpage is one solution. Or you could use core tags, combing e.g. if_article_list, if_search, etc. as you need.

Not sure what output you’re after, but you can use article_custom and specify the article ID if you don’t want to use sticky articles.

philwareham · 2010-07-06 08:34:59

I use the following code for the dynamic parts of my meta info, pretty much covers all you’d need…

First, install etz_striptags plugin, then create custom fields ‘meta_title’, ‘meta_desc’ and ‘meta_robots’.

Put this code in your page template (or a ‘misc’ type form linked from the page template):

<txp:if_section name="">
    <txp:if_status number="200">
        <txp:article_custom section="homepage" status="sticky" form="meta_dynamic" />
    </txp:if_status>
    <txp:else />
    <txp:if_individual_article>
        <txp:article form="meta_dynamic" />
        <txp:else />
        <txp:article status="sticky" form="meta_dynamic" />
    </txp:if_individual_article>
</txp:if_section>

What the code above does is pull in article info even if the page is a sticky or the homepage (for that you’ll need to set up a section called ‘homepage’ and a sticky article for it and make sure that section is set to display on homepage).

Then set up an ‘article’ type form with the following in it:

<title>
<txp:if_custom_field name="meta_title">
    <txp:custom_field name="meta_title" />
    <txp:else />
    <txp:title />
</txp:if_custom_field>
 | <txp:site_name /></title>
<txp:if_custom_field name="meta_desc"><meta name="description" content="<txp:custom_field name='meta_desc' />" />
<txp:else />
<meta name="description" content="<txp:etz_striptags><txp:excerpt /></txp:etz_striptags>" />
</txp:if_custom_field>
<txp:if_keywords>
    <meta name="keywords" content="<txp:keywords />" />
    <txp:else />
    <meta name="keywords" content="your,default,keywords,here" />
</txp:if_keywords>
<txp:if_custom_field name="meta_robots">
    <meta name="robots" content="<txp:custom_field name='meta_robots' />" />
    <txp:else />
    <meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" />
</txp:if_custom_field>
<txp:if_section name="">
    <txp:else />
    <txp:if_individual_article>
    <txp:else />
    <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/<txp:section />" />
    </txp:if_individual_article>
</txp:if_section>

So that code checks whether you have put a custom page title in ‘meta_title’ custom field, and if not uses the page title instead.

Then it checks whether you have put a custom description in ‘meta_desc’ and if not uses the page excerpt, which has all textile formatting stripped out using etz_striptags (you probably could go further and have a default description if the user has not filled in the excerpt by using <txp:if_excerpt> though you should encourage users to always fill out a unique description for each page for SEO anyway).

Next it checks whether the keywords field has been filled in, and if not uses a default selection of keywords.

It then uses an SEO recommended robots meta unless you override it by entering a custom instruction in ‘robots_meta’ custom field (for example you could use ‘none’ in the meta_robots custom field for any pages you did not want search engines to index).

Finally, another SEO recommendation, it makes sure section landing pages are canonical – which means search engines index only http://www.yourdomain.com/yoursection and not http://www.yourdomain.com/yoursection/ (note the extra trailing slash) as sometimes they might index both those URLs separately and dilute your search ranking.

Hope that helps,
Phil

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2010-07-04 16:37:00

Best practises with custom meta information

#2 2010-07-04 17:13:48

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#3 2010-07-04 17:53:53

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#4 2010-07-04 18:00:01

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#5 2010-07-04 18:14:36

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#6 2010-07-04 18:17:41

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#7 2010-07-04 18:41:54

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#8 2010-07-04 18:47:25

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#9 2010-07-04 18:55:08

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#10 2010-07-04 23:20:46

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#11 2010-07-05 11:31:24

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#12 2010-07-05 14:29:37

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

#13 2010-07-06 08:34:59

Re: Best practises with custom meta information

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