Skip to content

WordPress SEO 2.1: release notes

Joost de Valk 20 April 2015 72 , ,

As we don’t want to drown these release notes in the bigger security news, we’ve made it into a separate post. WordPress SEO 2.1 (both free and premium have the same version number now) contains a series of bugfixes but also some enhancements I’d like to highlight in this post.

These changes come on top of the (arguably bigger) changes I mentioned in my post last Friday, be sure to read that if you haven’t yet.

WordPress 4.2 ready

This release makes sure that WordPress SEO behaves well with WordPress 4.2, of which the release is imminent. Most importantly it makes sure the taxonomy metadata is carried over well.

Twitter cards enabled by default

Recently, Twitter removed the need to validate your site before Twitter cards worked. This made it possible for us to enable Twitter cards by default, which we’ve done in this release. Now, if you’re installing WordPress SEO on a new site, you’ll get Twitter Cards as soon as you’ve activated the plugin.

We’ve also removed the use of the twitter:url meta tag, as Twitter no longer uses it and uses the canonical instead.

Update the Facebook API to its latest version

Changes like these are the kind of under the hood changes that nobody notices but are important nonetheless: Facebook has updated its API to a new version and is deprecating the old one. This leads to us being required to update the code in our plugin. You’ll notice some minor interface changes, but most of the stuff is under the hood.

Plugin conflict notices

Some plugins don’t really work together. For instance if two plugins add Facebook OpenGraph code to a page, Facebooks output becomes uncontrollable. For this reason we’re showing conflict notices when you install a plugin that does something our plugin does too. You can ignore them if you want to, but it should help prevent the “huh why isn’t this working” type issues.

Validation messages everywhere!

If you’re using a featured image for your social meta data, and that image is too small to work with Facebook, we’ll now show you an error. Also, if you’re editing title and description templates on the SEO → Titles & Metas page and you use a variable that isn’t available for that template, we’ll give you a helpful warning.

Avatar of Joost de Valk
Joost de Valk

Joost is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Yoast. He has a long history in WordPress and digital marketing. On our blog, he has written a lot about SEO in general, technical SEO and important topics related to SEO.

Discussion (72)

  • Breadcrumbs not working:

    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare yoast_breadcrumb() (previously declared in /home/doctorof/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/inc/wpseo-functions.php:43) in /home/doctorof/public_html/wp-content/plugins/breadcrumbs/yoast-breadcrumbs.php on line 311

    Couldn’t see anything about breadcrumbs in the SEO dashboard – do I need to update the previous code or something?

  • Since the upgrade I’ve noticed that Facebook doesn’t take the facebook description I add to a blog post and simply posts the title and graphic.

    Is this a glitch?

  • Very interesting for WordPress SEO 2.1, with SEO features it will be easier to optimize the website, but I still have not tried, whether the many changes that arise or not so,.

  • YOAST on the Bridge theme. I added SEO into bottom of page and it wipes out the page settings for Bridge. Wipes out the slider shortcode, wipes out the ‘hide title’ config and wipes out the sidebar selection. Reverts it to 1/4 sidebar.

  • Hi Joost,

    Any timetable on a fix for Yoast with Bridge theme and WP Bakery as it seems I am not the only one struggling with this and my Yoast plug in is still currently disabled.

    Thanks
    Nick

  • When we updated Yoast on Sat 25 April 2015, the plugin completely disappeared along with all the data we entered. I read online that you just need to re-install it and everything comes back, but when we tried we got this message: Destination folder already exists.
    /websites/123reg/LinuxPackage22/ki/ck/st/kickstartenterprise.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/
    It’s mixing up 2 hosts: our old 123reg host followed by the directory with our new host starting public_html.
    Sorry if this enquiry is hard to follow, but we’re pretty new to WordPress. Any advice on what we can do?
    Yours, Kick Start Enterprise

  • Yoast seo is indexing the subpages of Archives.

    Even if i check the option : “Noindex subpages of Archives”

    I don’t have a problem before I update.

    I think it’s a bug in the 2.1.1 release.

    Thanks

  • I updated the plugin today, and since then, a post freezes if I try to add a link from the text editor. I can do it as html, but not the wysiwyg side. Also, the SEO character count wasn’t working, and the title didn’t show in the Google preview.

  • really i use Yoast SEOs is very nice
    thank you dear

  • I’m currently trying to use the Yoast SEOs sitemap feature to include my nextgen gallery pictures. However the plugin only seems to add 2 images per posts page. I have Nextgen setup to show 35 thumbnails per page. Is there any way to fix this and include all the pictures? Im on the latest WordPress, 2.1.1. WordPress SEO and 2.0.79 on nextgen galleries. I’ve been searching through the internet but only older articles show up which didnt help.

  • Hi there! Same problem with the 2.1.1 version: my website doesn’t load with your plugin activated. When I deactivate your plugin, my site works perfectly. I haven’t update the plugin in other website and it works too. Any help? Is there any updating coming soon?
    On the other hand, same problem with the sitemap. In WebMasterTools, appears “Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.”
    Thank you so much!

  • I have WP ver 4.2 and after installing WP SEO plugin ver 2.1.1, the pages appear to “lose” their data (content disappears / white page). Disabling the plugin fixes the issue. Should I wait for another update or is there another way around this?
    Thanks for a great plugin – who can be without it :)

  • After updating to version 2.1.1 my sitemaps are now showing errors in GWT.

    Errors Received:
    1. Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.

    2. We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit. Error 404

  • I installed the new version, and all work fine for me.

    thanks for your work here ;)

  • I started having issues in the back end of my WP site with your plugin ver. 2.01.
    The issue was with the post editor, if I wanted to edit any existing posts, when I open the post in the editor I couldn’t see any windows other than the content window. Even there I couldn’t switch between the visual and HTML editor.
    If I want to start a new post, everything in the editor window looks fine, WP SEO is visible, etc. As soon as I save the draft, and the editor realoads all the windows/boxes are gone.
    Updating to WP SEO 2.1.1. didn’t help.
    Disabling WP SEO makes the back end work fine again. Luckily the front end seems to operate fine with your plugin activated.
    Here’s a screen shot of how my post editor looks like with WP SEO disabled

    Here’s how it looks with WP SEO active

  • We are on a WordPress platform and when I tried to include the familiar elements of keyword, SEO title and meta description, I don’t see the usual fields. Have they been replaced and where can I get instructions about filling those out? Thanks

  • I have multiplule sites on Azure Server with clear database. Those with auto update the plugin has just removed itself. I had one site that was not on auto update for plugins, wp had already updated. When I updated the plugin files removed themselves from wp-content/plugins. It seems that the data is still in the database as I did have a client re install plugin without issue.

  • Ok, i don’t know if anyone else is having this issue, but 2.1.1 update messed up my social sharing, i only get garble text when i try to share anything! That was the only plugin update i made to my site today and i’m stuck now.

  • Joost nice work man. Always impressed how you continue to stay ahead of the curve. Implementation of Knowledge Graph is simple and easy. (as it should be) Lets hope Google cooperates with it now. Keep up the good work and Long Live The Internet.

  • WooCommerce is broken when Yoast plugins are enabled. If I disable WordPress SEO it all works, but obviously the important metas go with it.

    With WP SEO enabled, I can’t edit product variations, also descriptions and variations from other products are being pulled into the description area.

    Getting this in log:
    PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined method WPSEO_OpenGraph::image_output() in /wp-content/plugins/wpseo-woocommerce/wpseo-woocommerce.php on line 630

  • Hey guys I’m getting this on most of my posts:

    Fatal error: Call to undefined method WPSEO_OpenGraph::image_output() in /www/palebluedot.tv/www.palebluedot.tv/www_root/wp-content/plugins/wpseo-video/video-seo.php on line 2444

  • Hey ,
    thanx for the update ……

  • This new update will certainly make a big difference particularly with regards to Twitter cards now being enabled by default. I also think the error message which shows if the image is too small for Facebook is really valuable.

    Great tool thanks for all your hard work Joost! We love this plugin!

  • As much as I appreciate WordPress SEO, I’d like to please request that it not insist on throwing up the “new features” splash screen after every update. I manage over 90 WP sites, most of which use WP SEO. I manage many of them remotely and when WP SEO updates, the next time I log into the admin dashboard of a site, I’m greeted with the WP SEO “Hey look what’s new!” screen instead of the site dashboard. If I am logged in to a site and update WP SEO from the dashboard, after the update completes and I try to navigate somewhere else in the dashboard, it goes to the WP SEO splash screen and I have to navigate away from that to get to where I wanted to go in the first place. Please stop it. I understand it’s just one extra click, but it’s really annoying to click on a link and be taken to somewhere else. Thanks for listening.

  • Looks like your latest plugin included spyware/bloatware/hackercode: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/security-issue-with-latest-wordpress-seo

    Once again, your quality control absolutely sucks.

  • Thanks for update for this nice plugin :X

  • To all: we’ve pushed WordPress SEO 2.1.1, which fixes the issues some of you were having.

  • I still have to disable your plugin with 2.1.1. Otherwise my website doesnt load

  • New update stopped all our pages working, love, love, loved this plug in before. Has this update got some issues, if so will there be a fix for the issues as it seems others have too. I really want to continue using and was very much thinking of upgrading, but this mornings update kinda freaked me, until I disabled and site working fine.

  • There are errors.

    Warning: the variable %%category_description%% cannot be used in this template

    Warning: the variable %%tag%% cannot be used in this template.

  • Nice update thank you! What is the recommended size for the Company Logo in WordPress SEO: General Settings?

  • The same here. The update broke my woocommerce. But if I deactivated yoast woocommrce SEO and not WordPress SEO then it works and vice versa.
    It seems like it can’t run both (yoast woocommerce SEO and wordpress SEO).

  • Thank you for the update, but most importantly thanks you for being so prompt with every WordPress release. I’ve been using your plugin for a while now and all I can say is that it’s definitely the best one out there.

  • Thanks for update. I already change all of my website.

  • Deactivating the plugin allowed site to work.

  • Same as above, Latest update broke woocommerce.

    Fatal error: Call to undefined method WPSEO_OpenGraph::image_output() ***************wp-content/plugins/wpseo-woocommerce/wpseo-woocommerce.php on line 630

  • Thanks for the updates. After updating, we are getting white screens for all front-end and back-end pages associated with The Events Calendar. When WP SEO is deactivated, the pages are accessible. From the error log:
    PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined method WPSEO_OpenGraph::image_output() in /nas/wp/www/cluster-10353/aquaponic/wp-content/plugins/wpseo-woocommerce/wpseo-woocommerce.php on line 612

  • On one of my clients sites, update gives me white screen of death!

  • Just an FYI, this new update breaks WooCommerce permalinks for many products. Not sure specifically what the issue is but it began occurring after installing your latest update and WooCommerce 2.3.8. Clicking on certain SKUs results in a blank page – Debug mode points to a PHP error from your plugin. Disabling WP SEO resolves the issue.

  • Thank you for your work, I love this plugin.

    The breadcrumbs in the Google SERPs got broken, I hope that with this release this is fixed. I have checked this page in Rich snippets testing tool and it gives 1 error missing url, is this ok? This same page (https://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-2-1-release-notes/)

    Kind regards.