I agree–I just looked over those reviews and I don’t have those same problems. And there were only 6.
Did chuckle a bit at how Yoast changed the wording of their page. It used to be very condescending and arrogant; now it’s much more diplomatic. lol
It wasn’t so much the volume of 1* reviews as the nature of them and it made me question how much trust I can put in the 5* reviews. Plus, the fact that I got spammed by the developer didn’t exactly help matters. But, I guess there’s only one way to find out…
Looks like Yoast / Joost is an avid reader of these forums then lol
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Comparing to Yoast, yes, head and shoulders above.
I’ve been a MyThemeShop customer for years now, and something that they have a history of doing is breaking themes/plugins when pushing updates (even their own updater plugin).
For example, they may add a feature on a plugin, and just flat out kill compatibility w/ your current setup. This has happened several times, on several diff plugins.
‘Most’ work fine, and their support is decent, but def something to keep in mind before going all in, esp this early in the lifecycle of this plugin.
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I recall having to block Yoast updates for quite a while because some flashy new feature (using Javascript, I think) made my editor go all googly. It was some time before they fixed it.
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This is all useful info. As I’ve got nearly 30 sites to support, going all in is definitely something to be avoided. I do still have reservations but I’ll install it on one of my simpler sites and give it a test for a while. Thanks everyone.
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Use Rank Math
Have they formally confirmed their commitment to continued support for the Classic Editor in the years to come?
No. But they confirmed that as long as it will be compatible with WP 4.9, it will work. And because RM is a better SEO plugin, reason is to fork RM, not Yoast, if you want to do that.
But my gut says, with RM will be less problem than with any other SEO plugin.
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Thanks.
I haven’t really heard of RankMath before this tread so keen to know why you think it’s superior to Yoast?
What aspects of SEO is it doing better than Yoast and what aspects is it missing?
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There are some design flaws (maybe just for me, I am sensitive to UI quirks), but overall, you will have premium Yoast features plus more for free. You can install it and see yourself. During installation it asks to register an account, but you can skip it.
On Facebook they have very active group and are quick with support there. You can join and ask about supporting CP. This is recommended, as it increases chances that RM will support CP one day.
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Rankmath. Why I use it? Oh…
5 keywords for free.
REAL advices to better SEO and gain consistency.
I love their approach to UI, I find it less confusing… All in one place under the post in a clear way.
The wizard at the start guides you better than yoast one.
SEO efficiency measured with a number (yoast does it with three colors. They go granular, 67/100 is better than 50/100, since they have full explanation of the why you can better your SEO one post at the time). And, oh…did I mention they SEO everything (not only pages and posts! Also images) for FREE.
…and much more.
So, yes… It’s a better option to fork rankmath than yoast.
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Just want to chime in on supporting SEO by Rank Math. I’ve just tried it on a couple of builds and I found it way more intuitive in guiding me through the initial-setup and individual page/post/custom post SEO process. Not to mention having features I usually only see on premium plugins. Gotta love the 4.9 backwards support as well (instantly a good sign for us Classic Press users).
I’d highly urge anybody to give it a try.
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I actually had a really great conversation with one of the guys over at RankMath – I posted about it here: Is Yoast Toast? - #55 by BlueSkyPhoenix
They are watching and cheering us on; I expect they’ll continue to be supportive.
My developer has been in touch with them a couple of times with a couple of minor issues, which they fixed promptly. The Facebook group is active and helpful. Really – how much more can you ask for? At least they’re not using scare tactics to try to get you to upgrade.
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I must confess to still being a little hesitant in using Rank Math. As I mentioned in this post they didn’t get off to a good start for me. Then I read this SCAM ALERT: Rank Math SEO (WordPress Plugin Review) - LittleBizzy and also found out that the developers of Rank Math are on the SlickStack Permanently Banned Plugin Vendors blacklist for “Ethical-Technical Reasons”.
That being said, it’s interesting to note that Yoast SEO and Joost de Valk are on the SlickStack “Not Recommended Plugin Vendors (Possibly Banned In The Future” blacklist, which I kinda like 
I don’t use LittleBizzy or SlickStack and know very little about them so generally I would take their opinions and “advice” with a huge pinch of salt. But, it’s just that I have first-hand experience of Rank Math’s unethical practices and I’m struggling to get past that.
As for Yoast trying to scare people into upgrading, that’s equally unethical in my view, but not at all surprising. There’s no doubt in my mind that Yoast SEO will introduce some kind of breaking change in the next release or two.
All in all, SEO is still a big uncertain area for me.
So…I wonder if some SEO features should be built into the CP core? Essential features such as being able to edit the page title and meta description as well as auto XML sitemap generation. Any thoughts on that?
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They advertise themselves as:
" The Slickest WordPress Stack
Ever Imagined.
Choose any datacenter in the world. We’ll setup a dedicated SlickStack VPS server for you and manage it to perfection (24/7). Lightning-fast loading speed, 100% free SSL certificates, and dozens of technical SEO features are included in every hosting plan…"
Which means they are in competition with other SEO providers. Which means their opinions are probably not entirely impartial.
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I agree which is why I said I take their opinions with a pinch of salt. However, the fact remains that I can actually relate on a personal level to some of the comments in the LittleBizzy “scam alert”.
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Also, there’s also this lengthy first-person review which concludes,
In my honest opinion, I have used this plugin for 3 or more months on two sites. Both the sites had problems with wordpress dashboard speed loading. It took lot of time for any operations to complete.
The Yoast Free version is better and tested well. It is more authoritative and well-used by many websites. The developers (mythemeshop) are simply making users the scapegoats in their testing cycle. See note 2 below.
It should have been tested thoroughly. I think in future, it may behave properly. This plugin coming from “marketing crazy” developers is not intended for live usage.
Note 2: This is what was so terrible about WPMU-DEV… lots of bugs, no apparent testing, push the code anyway and hope for the best.
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Thanks to everybody bringing this information to the table. We definitely need to be scrupulous on these things - I’m personally going to keep Rank Math on the couple of builds I’ve deployed it to and see if there’s any problems ongoing - unfortunately they were small sites with small numbers of visitors anyway so I’m not sure if they’ll make for a good before-after comparison.
I think if there’s any unethical practices that the community are against alla fake-reviews and spam etc we definitely need to hold the plugin authors responsible and this should be reflected by whatever plugin repository we end up with (I’m side-tracking here though). I’m personally yet to receive any email from the author which is a sign that at least maybe they take the review feedback seriously?
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@1stepforward Please take a look at https://petitions.classicpress.net and search for these issues or add a new one (I would use 2 separate petitions for these requests). This is currently our best tool to prioritize what gets included in future versions based on the community’s wishes.
Petitions that are specific and well-scoped (i.e. “allow editing page title and meta description”) are much easier to implement (for example “add SEO features” would quickly become a mammoth task because it’s not clear what exactly should be added).
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Also, around the same time WP 5.0 came out and I switched to CP, my hits and impressions dropped off a cliff. I can’t help but wonder if something has been built in to recent versions of Yoast to conflict with non-Gutenberg sites.