Yoast SEO plugin – acting like malware when deleting attribution link?

  • Uploaded the yoast seo plugin and did not like the attribution link as an HTML comments (“debugging” code as he calls it) that is forced into every page.

    Deleting this was not obvious, so i read a bit. Saw a post here with someone raising the same point. Yoast would not help with deleting it, but said poster was welcome to do so on his own.

    First time I deleted it, it erased my page titles.

    Tried again, this time successfully, by leaving the php line, but deleting the offending text string inside it. Checked my pages, and everything seemed OK.

    Went back to work on the site today, and noticed that I now had 2-3 instances of the title element on each page. MEH!!!

    Yoast seems to be real intent on keeping a link back to him in everyone’s code. So intent, that it feels like malware, playing around with my site.

    I ended up deleting the addon, and my site went down (500 server error) after about 10 minutes. I’m assuming/hoping that this is just a strange coincidence, but not sure at all. His plugins can be real buggy, and this can be related. At least there is time correlation.

    So chatting with my hosting now, trying to get the site back online.

    Anyways, when the site goes back online, I’ll be using a different plugin, needless to say.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Yoast seems to be real intent on keeping a link back to him in everyone’s code. So intent, that it feels like malware, playing around with my site.

    If you do not want to use that (or any plugin) that’s fine. But you really should be careful about making accusations like that.

    I just tried it on my site. It’s line 430 on frontend/class-frontend.php and the only modification I had to make was place // in front of $marker.

    That’s all it took and it did not break my site or act like malware at all. I’ve no idea what you’ve done or tried but again just don’t use that plugin and please skip the accusations.

    Thread Starter bsasson

    (@bsasson)

    Yea, when you do that then, assuming you’re using the plugin to create meta titles for each post, they stop working and revert to the WP defaults. And if you work around that, then you’ll get each title twice in the code. This is not some allegation, but my recent experience with his plugin.

    And I was a big fan of his. Anyways, now my site is completely broken, and it happened about 10 minutes after uninstalling his plugin. In the past I’ve had issues with his plugins not playing nicely with other plugins, but never like this. There may be no connection between my blog melting and his plugin, I don’t know enough to confirm, and my host had to disable my theme just so I can get back into the wp-admin. But the main point is what he’s doing when you try to delete the comment attribution. Ask him.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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