ThemeShaper Forums » Thematic

2 suggestions for 0.9: L10n improvement and an SEO issue

(10 posts)
  • Started 2 years ago by demetris
  • Latest reply from demetris
  • This topic is resolved

  1. demetris
    Member

    Hello, Ian!

    Congratulations on the work being done on 0.9. Thematic is getting better and better!

    To my suggestions:

    1. HONOURING CUSTOM DATE FORMAT

    Thematic does not use the date format set in Dashboard > Settings > General. (I can try and submit a patch for review if you are interested. I’ll just copy the code from a theme I trust, like Sandbox, Simplish, or Tarski.)

    2. USING AUTOGENERATED EXCERPTS AS META DESCRIPTIONS.

    If a post/page has no explicit manual excerpt, it may be better to not add a meta description at all. I recently posted a request about this on the HeadSpace forum:

    http://urbangiraffe.com/support/topic/option-to-disable-autogeneration-of-descriptions-if-there-is-no-manual-excerpt

    Note the Matt Mullenweg quote. It is interesting.

    See also:

    The manual Excerpt in WordPress. What, why, how, tips and plugins
    http://op111.net/67

    I did a little research on the subject while writing this and, while there is no way to tell, other than extensive testing, I tend to believe that AUTO-generated meta descriptions are not a good idea.

    Cheers,
    -dk

    Posted 2 years ago #

  2. Ian Stewart
    Key Master

    Thanks for pointing this out, Demetris. Esp. the quote from Matt.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  3. demetris
    Member

    You are welcome, Ian.

    I see no. 2 has already been taken care of. :-)

    Posted 2 years ago #

  4. Ian Stewart
    Key Master

    If you do want to submit a patch for no.1 that'd be awesome.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  5. demetris
    Member

    Ian, unless I got something wrong, this was easier than I expected. Just one line in the function thematic_time_display().

    I also did one change in thematic-options.php, to use the core-supplied function for the 32x32 icon instead of hard-coded HTML.

    This is the same function used in default WP settings pages, with one condition added, to check if the function exists.

    http://op111.net/c/tmp/thematic-r386-date-icon.diff

    Posted 2 years ago #

  6. Ian Stewart
    Key Master

    Thanks! I'll test it out.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  7. demetris
    Member

    Thanks!

    The screen icon code should be OK. I use it since the start of the year in Tangofy -- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tangofy/ -- and no issues have been reported so far. :-)

    But it is not used in many plugins or themes. Maybe people don’t know about it.

    I run a search in a directory with about 200 themes and plugins, half of them have been updated for 2.7, and it only returned two instances, in two plugins by Lester Chan.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  8. Chris
    Moderator

    @Demetris:

    Diff tested, confirmed and uploaded. (the time format thing)

    Thanks for your help!

    Cheers,

    Chris

    Posted 2 years ago #

  9. Ian Stewart
    Key Master

    Fixed the icon. Thanks, Demetris.

    Posted 2 years ago #

  10. demetris
    Member

    Thanks, Chris and Ian! Glad I could be of help.

    Posted 2 years ago #

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