Media Attachments

Hello!

What do you want to do with Media Attachments, specifically?

TSF sets the attachment pages to “noindex” by default. You can modify this at “SEO Settings > Robots Meta Settings > Indexing > Post Type Settings”. This suffices for almost all sites.

For those who want more, we have the free Origin extension, which, unlike WordPress 6.4, correctly redirects attachments: https://tsf.fyi/e/origin/. The optional free extensions serve as a gateway to our premium offering (I need to sustain TSF somehow).

Extension Manager is also super lightweight — it practically loads 7 files to run all of its features on the front end (in contrast, WordPress loads over 60 files visitors don’t use).

On the Extension Manager product page, I added a timer that asserts its effect on performance on every page load (including 6 extensions we use), amounting to an average of about 0.00011 seconds. See “Load impact, this request:” on https://tsf.fyi/em. This number is below human perception (I start noticing input delays above 6ms in games).

I plan to overhaul the plugin like I did for TSF v5.0, which should bring it down to 0.00005s (0.5ms) or lower. Still, this would be more for a personal achievement than making business sense.

Thanks for explaining this! I think you’ve got a killer plugin but I first want to test it out. I’m new to it, but not SEO.

I understand what you mean by sustaining your business with premium extensions.

In your opinion what’s the major difference between
1. TSF sets the attachment pages to “noindex” by default. You can modify this at “SEO Settings > Robots Meta Settings > Indexing > Post Type Settings
2. Origin extension

What’s the use case of the origin extension you can just handle it with the media noindex?

I love how lightweight your plugins are!

Hello!

Long ago, WordPress linked to attachment pages by default whenever a user inserted an image into a post. The Origin extension is helpful for users who have old posts lingering with this effect.

But the automatic linking is no longer in effect. For the off-chance such a page is reached, the “noindex” robots value is practical enough to fend off search engines. If no link exists to such a page, it’s unlikely a search engine will find it. So, Origin won’t do much for new sites.

There are some technical aspects where having “noindex” is helpful, such as filtering post types early. WordPress created exclusions for the attachment post type about 80 times in its code, which is inefficient and prone to mistakes.

Also, WordPress is finally considering to rectify their mistake of WP 6.4; practically, Origin’s functionality will be shipped in Core, albeit not as elegantly. I can’t entirely agree with this change because it takes away the user’s ability to still display attachment pages.

Lastly, Origin shouldn’t be relied upon: There may be errors in the query or database that can lead to the failure of redirecting users to the original post or attachment URL. The “noindex” option, shipped and enabled by default in TSF, isn’t affected by such issues. So, both working in tandem is the best solution.

Concerning SEO, I don’t believe much ranking value is to be gained in 301-redirecting from attachment pages, if at all. I find that the value lies more in accessibility.

I think this covers everything. Cheers!

Wow – thanks for the detailed explanation! That makes a ton of sense!