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1. syncbox
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I got a good one for you gurus out there or for the plugin author, should he read this post...

   A site (syncbox.com) has been a WordPress site for years. I keep it updated. It's using 2.8.4 and isn't using the basic theme markup as it is a totally custom layout with WordPress logic inserted and used as a CMS.

   While validating said xhtml-strict markup (again, as it used to be pretty valid) I got 3 errors. Two I don't really care about but this one intrigued me:

   <title>S Y N C B O X  web design & development</title>
   
   This message may appear in several cases:
   
   * You tried to include the "<" character in your page: you should escape it as "<"
   * You used an unescaped ampersand "&": this may be valid in some contexts, but it is recommended to use "&", which is always safe.
   * Another possibility is that you forgot to close quotes in a previous tag.

   Here's how the title is being generated via WordPress functions:

   <title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

   I hadn't seen this before, so I suspected a recent plugin (TGIF SEO plugin) and so disabled it and the error went away. Well, OK... but WHY?

   And while sourcing the why of it... I have to ask HOW?!!? Because... I cannot find that ampersand anywhere! I cannot figure out where the "web design & development" data is being pulled from... It's not in my template files at all (so not hard-coded in)... and it's not in the site name or site description fields in my General Settings!

   Where else can I look? I honestly think I may have had "web design & development" in the tagline at one time, but it's not in there NOW as I checked directly in the database options table... in the blogdescription, which has "design | develop | deploy" in it.

   TOO WEIRD!

   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tgfinet-seo/

2. syncbox
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   (146, 3, 'title', 'S Y N C B O X web design & development'),

   This is what I am seeing in an exported sql file from my database...

   So I have an answer to my question... this plugin (when activated) pulled the CURRENT title -- which WAS written using &+amp+; (man, you cannot write some things in these posts, huh?) versus just an ampersand -- and later changed to "design | develop | deploy" in the wp_options table via the General Settings and stored it in the wp_postmeta table and then DID NOT update it LATER when it was changed...

   But I just noticed that this plugin is compatible up to 2.7, so maybe that is the issue. My version is 1.3 and that is the latest one offered.

   Can anyone tell me if something in the database changed since 2.7 and 2.8 regarding where the title information is stored in the db? In other words, is this plugin looking in some deprecated leftover field which isn't displayed in the admin anymore?

   YOUR HELP appreciated!

3. syncbox
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I noticed, too, when using the auto upgrade button for this plugin's settings page, I get this error:

   Warning: TGFI_SEO::require_once(pclzip.lib.php) [tgfi-seo.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/syncbox1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tgfinet-seo/tgfi-seo.php on line 1293

   But there is no file by that name in the plugin files you download, nor on my local or remote version of the plugin. Not sure what this refers to and in any case I am already using the latest version.

   Just FYI. I'm going to remove the plugin, update the database directly and find another SEO plugin to use, but thanks still for any insight anyone can provide regarding any changes to the WP database over versions.

4. syncbox
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Wouldn't a plugin that uses %blog_title% in its Settings be getting that from the CURRENT information in the General Settings where you set the title of your site?

   Shouldn't an SEO plugin look for the CURRENT value of that information?

   How would you go about triggering that plugin to REWRITE whatever it adds to wp_postmeta? I've tried deactivating and that didn't work. I DID manually update what the plugin wrote in wp_postmeta in the database, but am just trying to finalize all the information on this plugin.

   TIA

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