The second Beta version of Classic SEO has been released today. It aims to fix 2 or 3 issues reported by users.
Changes
The main changes are:
NEW: Add usage tracking notice and opt out
FIX: Variables translations in help pages will now translate
FIX: Fix for duplicate “view details” when GitHub updater is active
FIX: Fix for PHP error when refreshing sitemap in Search Console
Feedback
As always, feedback would be gratefully received especially by those experiencing the issues mentioned above.
We are nearing the release candidate stage now so feedback is especially important. There are around 20 users of Classic SEO at present which is nice, but a few more zeros on the end would be better.
How to get the updated version
You will be notified of the new version in your ClassicPress dashboard.
I’ve uninstalled the previous version and installed the new on a site without loosing (apparently) anything. For sure a backup before doing this is a good thing.
You can also export tour settings from Classoic SEO to keep a backup.
Then from beta 1 you will not need GitHub updater anymore (for this plugin).
Edit: or you can edit, in the first lines of the main file, the GitHub plugin URI to https://github.com/ClassicPress-plugins/classicpress-seo. Then GitHub updater should handle this for you.
Ah, if you missed beta1 for whatever reason, then you won’t get notified about beta2 as the small line of code GitHub Updater used has been removed because of the minor issue it created “Fix for duplicate “view details” when GitHub updater is active”.
If you are able to, then your best bet is to download the plugin from the link above. Don’t deactivate or delete the plugin from the dashboard. Just extract the zip file locally, then upload the files using FTP/SFTP into the classicpress-seo directory. You can just overwrite the files that already exist. Back in the dashboard, if you refresh the page, you should see beta2. None of this will affect your settings.
If you’re not able to do this, let me know and I’ll sort out a workaround.
This beta is looking really good! I’m still on Yoast, but, feeling like the switch is quickly approaching. One question that came up is: “How much time do I need to set aside to configure the plugin from the ground up?” without importing anything.
It probably depends on what settings you want to use and how many posts & pages you’ve got. Setting up things like Local SEO / Knowledge Graph could take a fair bit of time. In most respects, it’d be pretty much the same as setting up Yoast from scratch.
I personally would try importing from Yoast first (take a backup first obviously - even though the plugin does this anyway) and then see how it looks. It does a pretty good job of importing from Yoast but there’ll still be stuff to do afterwards.
Fair enough. I’ll probably do it over a weekend, so, I don’t have to schedule it in. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. I appreciate the import options, but, tend to avoid them. My reasoning is that if I import, it’s likely I’ll miss setting up (or finding) other things. By going through and doing it manually, I’ll be forced to become an expert.
ClassicSEO is a stable plugin even before the beta. I moved to it a few weeks ago and it created no problems with ranking my site. What’s more: The transition process made me think of the content of my site differently. I certainly recommend it to the entire ClassicPress community.
Тhe problem with the help\variables is solved, although there are 2 strings omitted in the translation file.
As I focused on the translation file, there were a few minor omissions in it:
It has references to the Wordpress Dashboard in several places. Could not find exactly where they appear. I think it is correct to replace them with the ClassicPress Dashboard.
Certainly several translation strings should not be a priority. I describe them because I noticed them. They have no real impact on working with ClassicSEO.
Thanks again for this plugin. It’s great that the ClassicPress has this solution and is independent.
My suggestion is to import, because if you configured something in Yoast, chances are they will be imported, it will save time by a margin.
Then, you will need more time, than with Yoast to familiarize and configure the rest settings, because there are a lot more options. It’s a completely different beast, and some settings can be not so obvious.
In Titles and Meta, Global Meta, “Separator Character” would be nice to have an ability to set custom character. This is the only one feature that exists in Yoast but didn’t in CSEO.
It largely depends on the site. I left Yoast a year ago and I don’t know what changed there during that time. For a site with about 50 pages / posts, it took me about 2 days for basic setup and about another week for adjustments to my content on some posts. I have corrected some of the publications because the analysis of Yoast, SeoPress and ClassisSEO is different and this was a way to look at my content in a new way.
Although setting from scratch you might want to save your keyword information in some way … it will save you effort.
In my case, Yoast and SEOPress had left a lot of junk in the database and I lost a few more hours to clear.
Thanks @KokoFresha. The translations feedback is really useful and I’ll aim to get them fixed for the next release. And thank you for your other comments too. It’s great to hear that it’s working well for you.
This is something I’m aware of myself and something I plan to look at after v1 along with better help text. I may try to consolidate some settings and make things a little easier to understand.
Do you mean breadcrumbs separator or titles? As far as i can tell, Yoast doesn’t have the option to set custom separators for titles but it does for breadcrumbs. Classic SEO has neither.
