SEO Titles Keep Disappearing

Hello again! It’s been a while.

I’m not sure what you mean by “disappearing.”

TSF doesn’t store any of its generated titles and descriptions in the database — every request they’re regenerated. These are displayed in the back end as input placeholders (sometimes mistaken as actual input) and can be overwritten manually. Your manual input should be stored indefinitely until you manually erase it.

If you find that the input fields are empty entirely (no value, no placeholder) then the generated data couldn’t be filled in (even though it may exist). When this happens, you’ll likely also see the character counters stuck at 0 and the pixel counters colorless and empty. Even if you’d fill something in, none of the counters update.

If all this sounds familiar, then the admin area of your site has crashed, and TSF’s scripts couldn’t be loaded. This can be resolved by deactivating a few plugins. See if the counters work again (and the title/descriptions reappear) after every plugin you deactivate. The last plugin you’ve deactivated should be investigated for issues.

If all that didn’t sound familiar, then please let me know, and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks!

Hey Sybre, hope you’re well sir.

The “Meta Title” does add placeholders, no issue there.

The problem is when I manually update the “Meta Title,” what I called the “SEO Title.” I have updated my Meta Titles, saved the post, came back and the titles are there.

Yet, when I check back months later, they’re always gone. As I said, I thought it was just me, but I’ve been logged my articles and SEO titles and they’re always gone. I’m not sure what gives…

Any idea what is causing this?

Sorry, I missed your follow-up.

I haven’t heard of this issue before. Are any maintenance, backup, or cleanup plugins active on the site? Those may mistakenly clear the content you use.

I think it’d be helpful for me to inspect the list of active plugins. You may send those confidentially here: https://tsf.fyi/contact. You can quickly grab the list at “Tools > Site Health > Info > Active Plugins.”

No worries.

I just did as you requested. Thanks sir.

Thank you, I received your email.

As I suspected, a ‘cleaner’ is active on the site: “Advanced Database Cleaner PRO.”
I believe the plugin thinks TSF’s meta is “orphaned” for some reason.

Since I do not have access to “PRO,” I do not know the logic they use. I can inspect their free plugin; what I found couldn’t be an issue.

Still, WordPress doesn’t need cleaning: It cleans up after itself (mostly), and as you already know, going the extra mile only causes issues.

The only thing I can think of that needs cleaning is post-revisions. WordPress will clean those retroactively after you limit the number of revisions — but only on post update.

Via this super lightweight plugin, you can manage the number of revisions WordPress keeps: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/limit-revisions/.

Alternatively, add a constant to wp-config.php to limit post revisions: https://www.ads-software.com/documentation/article/revisions/.

Hey Sybre, I used that plugin to cleanup wp_options some years back, big help there. Outside of that, I concur with you. I use wp-config.php for revisions.

So I ran a test on my dev site. I had the cleaner plugin go through the motions, but it didn’t change the TSF meta title. I also forced a clean of all the tables, and it still didn’t alter the TSF meta title.

I’ll leave it deactivated, but I’m not sure what else could be causing this. It’s been quite crazy.

It is a unique problem; I haven’t heard of it before. Still, I hope this resolves the issue — perhaps it was something in its routine and not a manual action. We should know if it isn’t fixed within a week or two when data disappears again. Keep me posted!