More people here using W3TC? That might very well be the issue…
Might as well throw our two bob’s worth in!
Please note we hugely appreciate Joost’s work (whatever his motivation!) and this isn’t a gripe, just info that may help sort the bugs.
We’re using WP 3.4.1 & WP SEO 1.2.5 & SEO News 1.0 on dedicated server with a customised Genesis child theme.
We had reverted to 1.1.9 as the News sitemap had failed to update after recent plugin updates, but figured the launch of the SEO News would remedy that.
We have found that after installing 1.2.5 we lost the strip category base and ended up with 10k 404s in Webmasters in 48hrs! Changing the setting and then re-saving fixes this, but if we change anything else we have to re-save the category base setting.
It seems the plugin has changed our permalinks settings in WP to ‘post name’ instead of custom, and we can’t seem to create new categories.
The News SEO plugin doesn’t respect the genre setting and also doesn’t default to include in sitemaps on new posts (the default setting in setup).
We don’t use W3TC but we do use WP Super Cache.
Hey @carsuk,
thanks for the input!
The plugin doesn’t change your permalink settings, but recently WordPress made post name an option, so if it was custom and set to /%postname%/ before that, it’ll now be postname 🙂
The category stuff is annoying, I’ve just made a potential fix, could you test it for me and see if that fixes things? Try the development version for that.
You can download the development version from here, or you can download it directly here.
Well that explains the permalinks change!
We’ll download the development version and see if it fixes our issues and come back once we’ve had a play.
Many thanks, Joost.
I just wanted to let you know I am having the category permalink with the latest release. Been battling it all weekend. Basically anytime I make a change to the site and clear cache, I have to go and re-save the permalink settings in the SEO plugin settings to fix my category links
. This fixes the issues.
I am using the latest versions of wordpress, Canvas by WooThemes and W3TC.
I cannot help you test right now, but just wanted to let you know my set up and what I am seeing.
Thanks!
OK, a quick play shows that the setting for the strip category base are now being maintained. Good news.
We can create a new category but it returns a 404 and the News plugin still doesn’t respect the genre set or add to sitemap as default on posts as per the settings.
Still, it’s progress!
Same issue here as everyone above using the latest release (1.2.5) and a customized theme. The settings would hold until I create a new category, add a post, update my site map or make any other changes on the site. It would then reset back to using /category/ in the URLs. This persisted when switching to the Twenty-Ten theme. I first tried flushing my cache, then disabled the Hyper Cache plugin that I use, but I couldn’t get the settings to stick. I worked around it by switching to another plugin that does this sole function and it’s working fine. Hope the info helps.
I’m using:
WordPress SEO
BuddyPress
Google XML Sitemaps
And development version don’t work to me.
I can also confirm the problems, using the latest versions of WP and Yoast SEO.
As a new side effect, I’ve observed that after modifying a category setting, it also breaked the paginations (page/2, etc).
Solved after and update permalinks, but anyway…there’s seems to be some odd behaviour 🙂
Joost – just a quick heads up…
We noticed that a post written after we uploaded the dev version was not showing in G News. It seems there were no sitemaps after we’d updated the plugin, but a save on the sitemaps page remedied it.
And the strip category base didn’t need re-saving after!
This is happening to me as well. Here is my setup:
Server: WPEngine.com (So there is caching)
Theme: Custom Genesis Child Theme
What’s scary about my scenario is that when I attempted to deactivate the plugin it caused a server error. I’m checking in with WPEngine now to discuss why that might be happening.
I thought my issue with the categories was fixed and it’s not. I’ve been going back and forth. I toggle it off, clear the caches and toggle it on, then it works for a bit. My preferred set-up is to strip the category base. I’ve had to un-check it and for the moment is seems OK .
What I’d really like to know is if someone tell me if this affects SEO and is there is anything I need to do. I am just starting to make some headway with my sites and don’t want to backtrack.
Can Joost or anyone advise if un-checking the strip category base affects SEO? Tx
Miz.Michele, yes most likely will affect SEO as the permlinks for categories have changed.
Joost provided a development version above that contains a fix, I’m going to take a look at that now myself.. carsuk above reported some success with it.
Any ETA on a patch Joost? Really appreciate all your hard work mate. Bet you’ll be glad to see the back of this release! 😀
Josh
@jkolbach. Thx. Pls let me know if the dev version works for you. Also, what do I do now? Do I have to go back through all my posts and update all the links where I linked to my categories?
It seems that everyone has a different view so it can get confusing!
Still don’t work to me… :/
