Meta Tags in Sections and Categories

[tudorilisoi]

I think the title hack is quite important, it gives greater individuality in SE result pages.

If you want "branding", you'd better leave site title first.
A short site title is a good idea, too.
This gives individual item titles more weight and visibility(for SEs).

Anyway, here's the hack for Joomla! 1.0.9:

Replace the whole setPageTitle function (lines 505 trhough 511) with this code:

Code: Select all

function setPageTitle( $title=null ) {
		if (@$GLOBALS['mosConfig_pagetitles']) {
			$title = trim( htmlspecialchars( $title ) );
			$title = stripslashes($title);
			$this->_head['title'] = $title ? $title.' - '.$GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename']   : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];
		}
	}

The same thing, only line number has changed from previous version.

[Jimboot]

Ok title site swap works in 1.10 now to try the metatag hack.
I always forget to change this and wonder why my rankings go haywire after an upgrade.... why hasn't this been changed 5 versions ago? Just curious.
Thanks guys

[jayw]

If anyone integrates these into 1.0.11 could you post your results?

Thanks,

-jay

[caleb2001r]

Anyone implement this yet?  Interested to see the code to do so.

[caleb2001r]

Bump.  This is a really important part of SEO no?

[caleb2001r]

I've discovered that you can accomplish the title modifications using this following core hack.  [LINK]

[Kampp]

Good job - great link.

I sure hope that this will be on the Joomla agenda very soon so we don't need to hack the core!

[caleb2001r]

Agreed.  The hard part is remember to reapply the hacks after updates.  The updates lately have been critical so it's pretty much a necessity to update.

[damo]

does this work in 1.0.11?

am i basically right in thinking this:

1. on the homepage it shows just the gloabl meta keywords/descriptions
2. then on individual content pages it puts the description and keywords of the individual content item before the global?

it would be really nice if this worked in 1.0.11??

[jayw]

I've got "Home -" at the beginning of the on the home page.

I've implemented the other hacks in this this thread and its still there.

How would you check the string for "Home - " and redact it if it exists?

-jay

Switching title/sitename:

In your files, open /includes/joomla.php

Around line 475 (may vary from version to version), find:

Code: Select all

$this->_head['title'] = $title ? $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] . ' - '. $title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];

Replace with:

Code: Select all

$this->_head['title'] = $title ? $title .' - '. $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];

Make sure you back up your file first, in case it causes you problems, but it shouldn't.

Thanks to Jinx who pointed out the obvious to me, which I had been looking at and not seeing...