Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for the delay and for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
The term’s description box becomes ‘rich’, with a TinyMCE editor, so I can WYSIWYG edit the description that is shown on my term pages
Could you please check this screencast I’ve created if I’m understanding your concern correctly?
https://i.rankmath.com/TA0LIo
If not, please also provide some screenshots or record a video screencast using a tool like Loom showing the issue and edit the first post on this ticket in the designated Sensitive Data section.
It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
I’ve included three screenshots.
<br />create new album facebook mobile<br />
#1 shows the edit description box (this isn’t a meta description used for SEO, it’s the actual term description that is used to display on the front end of the site by my theme).
#2 shows where I’m toggling the SEO Metabox off
#3 shows what results after toggling the SEO meta box off: the SEO meta box is gone, but ALSO, the description is now just a text box, not a TinyMCE rich text editor.
Hello,
Thank you for getting back to us.
This option would definitely require some additional custom work to unlink the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor with these options. But disabling the first option as you wanted in your first reply, would not enable you to set the individual SEO meta properties of your categories. The global settings are replicated in the meta SEO box as well so long the meta snippet fields are left empty this applies to the descriptions. As for the titles, the meta snippet title field will pick the ones set in the global settings.
Hope this is more clear. Please let us know if you have any other question.
Brian,
I’ll try to separate the two points.
1) The current interface is basically “switch this for behavior X”, when in reality, it is “switch this for behavior X + Y”. At a minimum, the UX should state that the ‘Add SEO Meta Box’ setting ALSO adds the TinyMCE editor to your term descriptions. A ‘better’ solution would be having a separate setting to add the TinyMCE editor, and it should probably be in a different section altogether. This is because a TinyMCE editor on the term description has nothing to do with SEO.
I wanted a TinyMCE editor for term page descriptions (again, not to be confused with the SEO description, which is a completely different thing). I actually looked for a plugin to add this. Then one day, I noticed that I all of the sudden had them. I had no idea why. It was only much later that I realized that by tweaking this completely unrelated SEO Meta Box setting, I was getting the TinyMCE editor too.
2) I understand that if I have an SEO Meta Box added to my term, but I leave the Meta Title and Meta Description (via the edit snippet button) ‘blank’, then the global settings will apply.
However, on the ‘advanced’ tab of the SEO Meta Box, I have checkboxes for ‘Index’, ‘No Follow’, etc. How can I have the global settings applied to these though? If I click any of those checkboxes, then go back and remove the SEO Meta Box from the term, the checkboxes I selected are STILL saved even though they are no longer visible. The global settings seem to only apply here if there is no SEO Meta Box selected. It’s almost like you need another checkbox that says “use global setting for these checkboxes”, and if it’s checked, all the remaining checkboxes are greyed out.
Hello,
Thank you for getting back to us again.
I was able to replicate the addition of the TinyMCE editor and I think your suggestion here makes sense for users who do want it and those who do not want it.
Regarding the option to set the SEO robots meta in your categories here, it is possible to even when you have the SEO Meta Box is disabled.
This can be done by turning on the Category Archives Robots Meta option and you will see the global options to have the categories set to index. See screenshot: https://i.rankmath.com/dad58g.
If I click any of those checkboxes, then go back and remove the SEO Meta Box from the term, the checkboxes I selected are STILL saved even though they are no longer visible.The global settings seem to only apply here if there is no SEO Meta Box selected.
In this case, once you have the meta box disabled your categories will pick the options for the global settings. The SEO meta box is only used for individual settings on all post types and taxonomies.
Global settings here will act as a backup in case the SEO meta box is disabled and they do apply for all categories in general for your case.
This is why the checkboxes still remain saved even after disabling them. It is possible that you had set the individual category robots meta the same with the global settings.
However, the suggestion you give here is still valid as well to have another button as not every user will get the explanation above. I will forward your request to the devs team to see if it is feasible with the plugin.
Hope this clarifies your doubt. Let us know if you have any other questions.
Brian,
Glad you understand the TinyMCE editor dilemma for the term descriptions. Hopefully, this can be adjusted in an update to the plugin.
For the SEO robots meta, we’re still not on the same page I don’t think.
Let me describe how I originally encountered this issue:
I had a bunch of new taxonomy terms (the tax was ‘location’, so names of countries basically) that I had created and I had manually set them to noindex, nofollow, etc via the SEO Meta Box for each term. This was a temporary action that I planned to reverse a few weeks later and make them all indexable, etc.
I thought that if I just removed the SEO Meta Boxes from this taxonomy, all the terms would default back to the global setting of being indexable. But that’s not what happened. Even with the SEO Meta Boxes removed, the previous settings (noindex, etc.) were STILL saved for each term, which I verified by checking the sitemap itself…none of the terms in question were added back to the sitemap. I had to manually go and adjust each term’s SEO Meta Box setting one by one back to ‘index’, then the sitemap would include them. And you can’t really tell by looking if the setting I’m seeing in the SEO Meta Box is just copied from the global default, or what I had previously customized. This is why having them greyed out when global settings are in effect would make it clear where the control is.
This same action is what caused the confusion with the term description TinyMCE, because I had tried to remove the SEO Meta Boxes as described above to make everything index, and noticed all my category descriptions lost their TinyMCE editors.
So this is kind of a confusing conglomeration of issues regarding user interface and functionality.
Hello,
Thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay.
The Add SEO Meta Box option only ensures that whether the settings would be visible on the Editor window or not.
As all the settings are stored in the database, if you’ve manually set the category to No Index, then this data is stored and works even if you hide the SEO Meta Box.
However, as mentioned by my colleague, your suggestion is forwarded to the dev. team and we will notify you of any developments on the matter.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out and it would be our pleasure to assist you.
Thank you.
Hello,
We regret the inconvenience caused due to the issue.
We need to take a closer look at the settings. Can you please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
We really look forward to helping you. Thanks
I don’t think I need to share my login stuff, this issue has nothing to do with my particular installation. You should be able to replicate it on your test machine.
As all the settings are stored in the database, if you’ve manually set the category to No Index, then this data is stored and works even if you hide the SEO Meta Box.
It basically sounds like it is behaving as you intended, and I’m just suggesting that it should behave in a different way. My argument is that it is not especially intuitive or helpful, as is.
Hello,
Thanks for getting back to us and we regret the inconvenience due to the issue.
You can add the following code snippet in your theme’s functions.php file to enable the TinyMYC editor in the Taxonomy edit screen even the SEO meta box is turned off.
add_action( 'category_edit_form_fields', [ '\RankMath\Admin\Metabox\Taxonomy_Screen', 'category_description_editor' ], 1 );
Please be noted that, we don’t have any plan to add a new settings for this in near releases.
If you require any further assistance don’t hesitate to get in touch. Thanks
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
