Help required with Google Search Console HTML improvement messages.

[campfullmonte]

My site was written for me years ago. Over time I have learnt enough about Joomla to make minor tweeks and changes but my knowledge is still a bit limited. A few years ago the site was somehow compromised and someone (probably more than one) found a way of creating users, I think via the K2 component. I’m still not sure what or how this happened, probably as a result of not keeping up with current releases. The end result was lots of users, some of which were posting comments & spammy links around the web pointing to these login pages. I did not need to have users logging in and there was no obvious way of accessing this functionality from the site structure.

With the help of the original developer we modified the design, did all the updates and added extra security. Having secured the site we set about trying to turn off user associated features and deleted the users that had been created. The developer had little or no experience of K2 user functionality so we both muddled through as best we could. I think we made a bit of a mess of it!

The site works and is fit for purpose but Google Search Console is now recommending some HTML Improvements that seem to be related to the creation of these users. I’ve been trying to fix these for days but I'm just getting more and more confused. Can anyone help me tidy these up? The most prevalent are duplicate meta descriptions and missing title tags.

Here’s an example of one such URL http://full-monte.com/component/k2/itemlist/user/1005 They are all the same(around 50 in all) with the exception of different user ID’s at the end of the string. You’ll see what happens if you follow the link(read warning at the end of this post). What have I done wrong?

Ideally I’d like to prevent anyone, including google bots, ever accessing this URL(s) and maybe returning a 404 page but I’m not sure of the best way to do this. Is this just a symptom of a much bigger issue? Do I need to bother doing anything? Is Google penalising me for these “errors”?

Apologies I’m not sure what extra info will be needed to help resolve this, I’ll try to post an FPA in a follow up.

WARNING: The site promotes our clothing optional (nudist) campsite and, whilst not prevalent, it does contain a few images of casual non-sexual nudity in this context. I mention this in advance as I wouldn’t want to upset anyone trying to help that might be offended when accessing my site.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts or advice.

[campfullmonte]

FPA output without plugins :

[05-Dec-2017 06:39:22 America/Chicago] PHP Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /home/fullmont/public_html/components/com_k2/templates/default/user.php on line 59

Joomla! Instance :: Joomla! 3.8.2-Stable (Amani) 7-November-2017
Joomla! Platform :: Joomla Platform 13.1.0-Stable (Curiosity) 24-Apr-2013
Joomla! Configured :: Yes | Read-Only (444) | Owner: --protected-- . (uid: 1/gid: 1) | Group: --protected-- (gid: 1) | Valid For: 3.8
Configuration Options :: Offline: 0 | SEF: 1 | SEF Suffix: 0 | SEF ReWrite: 1 | .htaccess/web.config: Yes | GZip: 0 | Cache: 1 | CacheTime: 30 | CacheHandler: file | CachePlatformPrefix: 0 | FTP Layer: 0 | Proxy: 0 | LiveSite: | Session lifetime: 60 | Session handler: database | Shared sessions: N/A | SSL: 0 | FrontEdit: 1 | Error Reporting: maximum | Site Debug: 0 | Language Debug: 0 | Default Access: 1 | Unicode Slugs: 0 | dbConnection Type: mysqli | Database Credentials Present: Yes

Host Configuration :: OS: Linux | OS Version: 3.10.0-714.10.2.lve1.4.66.el6h.x86_64 | Technology: x86_64 | Web Server: Apache | Encoding: gzip, deflate | Doc Root: --protected-- | System TMP Writable: Yes

PHP Configuration :: Version: 5.6.30 | PHP API: cgi-fcgi | Session Path Writable: Yes | Display Errors: 1 | Error Reporting: 32759 | Log Errors To: error_log | Last Known Error: 05th December 2017 07:43:40. | Register Globals: | Magic Quotes: | Safe Mode: | Open Base: | Uploads: 1 | Max. Upload Size: 64M | Max. POST Size: 64M | Max. Input Time: 60 | Max. Execution Time: 30 | Memory Limit: 256M

MySQL Configuration :: Version: 5.5.51-38.2 (Client:5.5.51-38.2) | Host: --protected-- (--protected--) | Collation: utf8_general_ci (Character Set: utf8) | Database Size: 9.15 MiB | #of Tables:  211

PHP Extensions :: Core (5.6.30) | date (5.6.30) | ereg () | libxml () | openssl () | pcre () | sqlite3 (0.7-dev) | zlib (2.0) | bcmath () | bz2 () | calendar () | ctype () | curl () | dom (20031129) | hash (1.0) | fileinfo (1.0.5) | filter (0.11.0) | ftp () | gd () | gettext () | gmp () | SPL (0.2) | iconv () | session () | intl (1.1.0) | json (1.2.1) | mbstring () | mcrypt () | mssql () | mysql (1.0) | mysqli (0.1) | odbc (1.0) | standard (5.6.30) | PDO (1.0.4dev) | pdo_mysql (1.0.2) | pdo_sqlite (1.0.1) | Phar (2.0.2) | posix () | pspell () | Reflection ($Id: 5f15287237d5f78d75b19c26915aa7bd83dee8b8 $) | imap () | SimpleXML (0.1) | soap () | sockets () | exif (1.4 $Id: 1c8772f76be691b7b3f77ca31eb788a2abbcefe5 $) | tidy (2.0) | tokenizer (0.1) | wddx () | xml () | xmlreader (0.1) | xmlrpc (0.51) | xmlwriter (0.1) | xsl (0.1) | zip (1.12.5) | cgi-fcgi () | imagick (3.1.2) | SourceGuardian (10.1.5) | mhash () | ionCube Loader () | Zend Guard Loader () | Zend Engine (2.6.0) |
Potential Missing Extensions :: suhosin |

Switch User Environment (Experimental) :: PHP CGI: Yes | Server SU: Yes | PHP SU: Yes | Custom SU (LiteSpeed/Cloud/Grid): Yes
Potential Ownership Issues: No

Core Folders :: --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (755) | --protected-- (---) |

Elevated Permissions (First 10) ::

Database statistics :: Uptime: 2540049 | Threads: 3 | Questions: 171262647 | Slow queries: 88 | Opens: 247623 | Flush tables: 1 | Open tables: 20000 | Queries per second avg: 67.424 |

Strict Information Privacy was selected. Nothing to display.

Strict Information Privacy Nothing to display.

[/size]

[/quote]