Difficult.

  • If this plug-in was intended for anyone less than an advanced user, it is very difficult to understand how to configure the settings, and the documentation leaves a lot to be desired.

    As an experienced Web Developer, it’s possible that I will find this plug-in to be great and useful AFTER several hours of dissecting the interface; but at first glance, it is not intuitive.

    For example, why do the “Template” fields include HTML tags and attributes? The tags appear to be the same in every field, e.g., <span property=”itemListElement” typeof=”ListItem”><span property=”name”>. What happens if I remove or change the value for the “property” or “typeof” attributes. In trying to determine if the tags and attributes had any relevance, I stripped the tags and left only the dynamic content such as “Page %htitle%”. The settings appeared to still work well.

    As for the documentation, further explanation could be provided in layman’s terms. In particular, the section entitled “Using the Settings Page” is very brief and not well written. For instance, in the following passage, an example of stripped and unstripped title/name tags would be helpful.

      %title% The title for the breadcrumb, typically the page title/name, tags are stripped and it is run through esc_attr().

    In summary, my review is not intended to criticize the functionality of the plug-in, rather it’s usability in terms of configuring the settings. As a suggestion, the interface could include a Basic mode for simplicity, and an Advanced mode (or drop-down) for fine-tuned configuration.

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  • Plugin Author John Havlik

    (@mtekk)

    The default settings for Breadcrumb NavXT are selected such that for the majority of sites little to no modification of them are needed. I have considered “Basic” and “Advanced” modes in the past, but I keep coming to the conclusion that they will be a support nightmare. In general hiding things leads to confusion when a setting that a user is looking for is not showing up. Additionally, it brings up the question, what is a “Basic” setting, and what is an “Advanced” setting. The distinction is going to be quite subjective.

    The breadcrumb template fields, are just that, they are the HTML templates for the various breadcrumb types. By default these fields include markup for Schema.org BreadcrumbList compatibility. If you remove the <span property=”itemListElement” typeof=”ListItem”><span property=”name”> portion, the breadcrumb will still display (as long as you have a %title% tag), but the breadcrumb trail will no longer be compliant with the Schema.org BreadcrumbList format. Since Google and other search engines pickup on the BreadcrumbList format for various things (Google search result breadcrumbs, etc), this markup is included by default as most users want this functionality.

    For instance, in the following passage, an example of stripped and unstripped title/name tags would be helpful.

    That is something I had not considered before; I will look at including an example into the documentation.

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