A new version of the Semiologic SEO plugin has just been released.   The main driver for the release was fixing a bug introduced in version 2.5 that prevented you from saving your Google Publisher url in the settings screen.   Obviously that needed to be fixed.   While in there I went ahead and added meta robots directives that will prevent Google, Bing and others from keeping indexing the extraneous WordPress Archive type pages and out of the search result listings.

Hence the WordPress Archive and Special pages will now have the following meta robots directives:

• Date archives – noindex, follow
• Author archives -  noindex, follow
• Tag archives  -  noindex, follow
• Category archives -  index, follow (actually the meta robots line is simply not present in the html output)
• Search results pages -  noindex, follow
• 404 pages -  noindex, follow

Full 2.6 changelog:

• Archive type pages – author, date, tags and search and 404 pages are now set to 'noindex, follow' to removing indexing of these pages.  Category pages will continued to be indexed.
• Tweak the Page and Post Title & Meta box.
  • Moved up higher on page editor.
  • Clarified purpose by changing to SEO Title & Meta
  • Removed incorrectly displayed 'Home' from field labels
• Make sure field input is properly sanitized.
• Fixed: Google Publisher entry was not being saved after change made in 2.5.

Note in version 2.5,  the entry of the home page Google Authorship capability was removed as Google simply stated, "don't do that!"  Your individual google+ profile should only be linked to single blog posts, pages and author pages.

Semiologic

Version 2.0 of the XML Sitemaps plugin has been released.  Besides testing for compatibility with WordPress 3.9, the plugin now provides a configuration screen to control sitemap generation.

This release includes:

• NEW Admin Settings
• Optionally include/exclude archive, author, category and tag pages from the sitemap
• Option to exclude individual pages
• Ability to generate sitemap for mobile-only sites in mobile sitemap format.
• WP 3.9 Compat
• Fix: Too many author pages entries were being generated

Thanks for the suggestions for improving the functionality of this plugin.  Input is always welcomed but not every request will make it in.   Our philosophy has always been to minimize the number of options and settings a user needs to be educated on and worry about and instead, have the user just activate and go.

Semiologic

Though not as visible there are always good things happening behind the scenes.  Work on version 2.0 of the Semiologic Reloaded theme is progressing  well.

The theme now has:

• Breadcrumb navigation widget
• Post navigation widget
• Drop down menu support based on the Semiologic menu creation approach!!
• Further schema.org encoding
• and the biggie ….. it is fully responsive!!!!

I'm still working out what to do with the menus on the smaller screens.   Also with some changes needed for the responsiveness I have to touch all 60 skins!   I'm looking at some retooling of those to minimize the edits.  I also need to figure out what to do with the Header Boxes and Footer Boxes panels on the smaller screen sizes.

Things I'd still like to get accomplished are:

• Add some google font support
• Support the native WP menu system
• Enhance the custom css capabilities to put more power in the user's hands for modifying the skins
• Add a minimal/"clean" skin family.

The target is now the end of March.   The good news is that I have been able to remain backwards compatible with the current theme releases while taking Semiologic into the future.

Watch for more news.

Mike

Semiologic

Version 2.3 of Semiologic Fixes is needed to run Semiologic on WordPress 3.7/3.8.    One of the features of this plugin is that is automatically configured the TinyMCE editor toolbar with additional commonly used buttons.   In doing this additional TinyMCE  plugins were bundled with the sem-fixes plugin.   Problem is that new major/minor releases of TinyMCE often required the need to upgrade the included plugins and provide different versions depending on what version of WordPress you were using.   Let's just say this is a pain.   So going forward I'm dropping the TinyMCE functionality and instead will rely on/recommend the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.    Semiologic Fixes will initialize the TinyMCE plugin for you.  After that you're free to alter as you see fit.

This version of Semiologic Fixes also includes:

• Added custom wp_redirect function to better handle browser 301 caching glitches.
• Disable automatic WordPress updating (sets AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED to 'true').
• Added back some post/page revision limiting.  If you do not specifically set the WP_POST_REVISIONS constant in your wp-config.php file, revisions will now be limited to 5 revisions deep.   If you do not wish to have any revisions set WP_POST_REVISIONS to false.  If you want unlimited revisions then set WP_POST_REVISIONS to true.  You can also specify your own number .  See Revisions in the WordPress Codex for more information.

And yes as you see from the list above I have disabled automatic updating of WordPress.    Having WordPress simply upgrade itself outside of the release cycles of themes and plugins just isn't a good idea.   A debate for another time.    If you would like to reenable upgrading set AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED to 'false' in wp-config.php and then plugin will respect your wishes.

Semiologic

Version 4.4 of the Author Image plugin has been released.   This version adds width and a height options to the Author Image widget so you can override the size of the actual image file.

For those not using the widget and adding the image directly to their WordPress theme template files, a new function call has been added allowing a size to be specified.

<?php the_author_image_size($  width, $  height, $  author_id = null); ?>

Note: The $ author_id parameter is optional. If it is not passed in, the code will attempt to get the current author of the page/post.

Thanks to Eric for the inspiration for this enhancement.

Semiologic

Now out is version 1.2 of the Semiologic Reloaded WordPress theme.    This version has been tested against WordPress 3.6 and PHP 5.4.

Version 1.2 includes:

• Initial implementation of editor style to match the selected skin and fonts when editting a page and post
• Compressed presentation of skin and layout pages display
• Added missing required WP css class rules
• New fonts added in version 1.0 and 1.1 are now available as choices in the custom css editor.
• Added new .main_content and .sidebar_content css class for additional skinning options
• Use size_format in place of deprecated wp_convert_bytes_to_hr function
• WP 3.6 compatibility
• PHP 5.4 compatibility

Additionally you will now see your Post and Page revisions in the editor in you are a Pro member.   Previously this had been disabled by the Semiologic Fixes plugin due to performance issues in the revision implementation.   With WordPress 3.6 Post Revisions received a complete overhaul.   If you wish to turn these back off, you'll need to set an entry in your wp-config.php file.  See the instructions in the WordPress Codex.

Future

I am planning for the next release of Semiologic Reloaded to coincide with the fall WordPress 3.7 release.   This will be a major release and be updated to be a fully responsive theme.  I also plan on improving child pages support for menus and in widget contexts.    If there is some feature or enhancement you are dying for, please make your voice heard.   I can't promise it will make the release but I will consider all requests.

Semiologic

Semiologic Google Analytics 5.0 is a major release of the plugin and adds new Event tracking capabilities and better insights into your site's traffic.

Version 5.0 includes the following enhancements and improvements:

• Added option to turn on cross-domain tracking.   This allows you to traffic your main site and subdomains in a consolidated set of data.
• Outbound links are now tracked as Events as well as Pageviews
• File downloads, mailto: and tel: links now tracked as events
• Added Keyword Ranking tracking code per A New Method to Track Keyword Ranking using Google Analytics
• Internal links that start with http:// were incorrectly being tracked as outbound links
• Fixed conflict with the wp-polls plugin that caused the tracking code to be included twice
• Updated help links in the Settings screen to latest Google help information
• WordPress 3.6 compatibility
• PHP 5.4 compatibility

Events Tracking

With the new Events tracking enhancements you can see when your visits download a file, click on a mailto link, or click on an outgoing link and which ones.

Google Analytics Event Tracking

Keyword Rank Tracking

With the new Keyword Ranking tracking code (per A New Method to Track Keyword Ranking using Google Analytics) you can see what Google search terms your visitors used to get to your site and the ranking position on the page.   As you are aware the position in Google's results varies from user to user based on Google's algorithm.   This capability allow you to see how you place for each of these users.

Please remember that the Semiologic Google Analytics is only available to Semiologic Pro Members with a valid subscription.

Semiologic

Version 2.4 of the [Semiologic Cache Plugin->@software] for WordPress has been released.  WordPress sites running the Semiologic Cache plugin experience vastly improved site performance and this release improves upon that.

This version features enhanced Apache htaccess rules for better performance and overall user and browser experience.   Additionally, the correct canonical url is now enforced when caching is enabled if the incorrect www or non-www version of the site's url is used to visit the site.

Upon upgrading the plugin you will need to turn the cache off (Settings->Cache) then back on to force the new server rules to be written.

Semiologic

Version 4.3 of the External Links  WordPress plugin has been released.   This version has been tested with WordPress 3.6 and adds compatibility with PHP 5.4.  This version also fixes a few bugs reported through the Auto Thickbox support forum on wordpress.org.

Fixes include:

• Issue with parsing of links with non-standard (class, href, rel, target) attributes included in the <a> tag. This caused Twitter Widgets to break.
• Issue where the external link icon was not added if the url specified by href had a preceding space href=" http://www.example.com"
• Issue with links containing onClick (or other javascript event) attributes with embedded javascript code. WordPress' Threaded Comments does this.
• Issue with 2 spaces being injected between <a and class/href/rel/etc. i.e <a href="http://example.com">
• 'Warning: ob_start(): non-static method anchor_utils::ob_filter() should not be called statically' warning when using PHP 5.4 or 5.3 with warning logging enabled.

Auto Thickbox was also impacted by several of these issues.  Auto Thickbox version 4.2 includes the necessary fixes.

Semiologic

Version 4.3 of the Author Image Plugin For WordPress  has been released.   Besides compatibility with WordPress 3.6 and PHP 5.4, this version adds 2 new features.

The first enhancement is that an alternative link can be set when you click on the Author's Image.  Previous versions would link to the standard WordPress /author/authorname permalink.   For example, a site may have an "About Me" page for the author you would want to link to.   There is a new setting in the User's Profile entry that allows a different url to be entered.  If this field is set then this is the url used in for the image.  If empty the standard /author/authorname link is used.

The second enhancement centers around gravatars.   This version will now use the Author's Image for his/her gravatar in comments and posts as implemented by the theme developer.   Previously you'd have an image for the author but if you never established a record at the gravatar site, a default image would be used.   Now the same image is used for both the Author Image widget display and the author's gravatar.

Semiologic