[ad_1] Pipe Wrench, an online publication that dissects different topics through longform stories, reactions, interpretations, and asides, has released a free WordPress plugin called Native Land Search. The publication commissioned the plugin from Alex Gustafson, a subscriber and contributor to the magazine. Native Land Search offers a search block or “Native Lands Aside” block pattern that users can add to the post content. Site visitors can search an address to discover if it is on indigenous lands. Pipe Wrench implementation of the Native Land Search block On the Pipe Wrench publication, the content authors have added a Cover block with a background image and put the search block inside the Group block. Here is an example of the output for a Florida location: The search results are powered by the native-land.ca API and Google Geocoding API. Native Land Digital, a non-profit organization, created the maps with the following mission: We strive to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see the history of their countries and peoples. We hope to strengthen the spiritual bonds that people have with the land, its people, and its meaning. We strive to map Indigenous territories, treaties, and languages across the world in a way that goes beyond colonial ways of thinking in order to better represent how Indigenous people want to see themselves. Native Land Digital notes that the maps do not represent or intend to represent official or legal boundaries of any indigenous nations. “All kinds of sites — magazine, newspaper, personal blog, academic hub, nonprofit — can use the block to add depth to all kinds of content involving Indigenous groups,” Pipe Wrench Editor Michelle Weber said. “LandBack, residential schools, climate change, general history — offering this search tool helps non-indigenous folks uncover and understand vital histories with ongoing ramifications.” The Native Land Search Plugin is available for download from WordPress.org and contributions can be submitted on GitHub. It may never have a million active installs but the plugin could be an important tool for sites involved in education or advocacy efforts. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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Google Search Completes Rollout of Link Spam Update – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Google announced today that it has completed its rollout of the link spam update, which was started a month ago. In an effort to combat sites using spammy links to manipulate rankings, the search engine has developed more effective ways to identify and nullify link spam across multiple languages. The update took a couple weeks longer than anticipated but the algorithmic changes that re-assess the ranking of improperly qualified links has now been fully rolled out. Commercial linking can be differentiated from link spam by specifying the appropriate rel attribute. For example, affiliate links must be identified to the search engine by rel=”sponsored” in order to not trigger any negative effects from the most recent update. Website owners and content creators should be aware of the search engine’s requirements when publishing affiliate links or sponsored/guest posts. While it is appropriate and ethical to disclose commercial links in the content of the post, this is no longer sufficient for Google. A post on the Google Search Central blog warns that this update carries a more strict response for sites that do not properly qualify commercial links: When we detect sites engaging in either publishing or acquiring links with excessive sponsored and guest posting without proper link tags, algorithmic and manual actions may be applied, similar to affiliate links. WordPress users who rely on plugins to manage sponsored and affiliate links will want to check to ensure they support the proper tagging for commercial links. Pretty Links, a link management and tracking plugin used by more than 300,000 WordPress sites, added support for the sponsored rel tag in version 3.1.0, along with sponsored toggle support in the block and TinyMCE editors. ThirstyAffiliates, another popular plugin active on more than 40,00 installs, has a global setting for adding rel attribute tags to links, which can also be adjusted on a per-link basis. The are many other affiliate link management, tracking, and cloaking plugins out there that may not have been updated with settings for easily designating relattributes in links. Those who do not want to have negative effects from the link spam update may need the ability to bulk update their links to comply. If you rely on a link management plugin, it’s a good idea to check the plugin’s settings, and alternatively the plugin’s changelog, to see what features are supported. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingGutenberg 11.2 Expands Color Support for Search and Pullquote Blocks, Introduces Experimental Flex Layout for Group Block – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Gutenberg 11.2.0 was released today with expanded color support for the Search and Pullquote blocks. Historically, customizing these elements has been out of reach for most users if their themes didn’t include them as options. This release introduces color support and border color support for the search button. Pullquotes are getting a similar treatment with border and color support, enabling some creative design options for those who enjoy taking the reins on customization. It’s these kinds of minute style changes that web developers would have been paid to perform back in the earlier days of theme customization gigs. Now the block editor enables anyone to jump in and do it themselves. These color support additions are part of a larger effort to improve the editor’s design tools to provide consistent application across blocks. “Another important goal of design tools is ensuring a wide range of exquisitely crafted patterns are possible; that best practices are not only possible but encouraged; and that customizing blocks is a consistent and natural experience,” Gutenberg Lead Architect Matias Ventura said in the ticket tracking design tool tasks. Gutenberg 11.2 also introduces support for a new experimental flex layout. The need for additional layouts was described by Rick Banister in a ticket submitted a year ago, requesting a “display horizontal” option for the Group block: When building patterns or trying to achieve a layout with multiple elements arranged horizontally it would help to have a parent block that would automatically arrange its children on a single line. Columns can be used to arrange things side-by-side, but they add quite a lot of extra nesting if you only need to arrange one set of blocks. We could leverage the Group block and add a ‘display horizontally’ or ‘act as a row’ option to it. It would wrap its children and act as a ‘flex container’ (display:flex; flex-direction:row;). Further flex parameters could be optional to align and distribute objects. A flex layout option has the potential to remove some of the complexity in nesting blocks. This early prototype shows a rough, unfinished UI for a layout switcher. It shows the difference between a flex layout and the default “flow” layout, which displays children one after the other vertically without any specific styles. The PR included in Gutenberg 11.2 makes it possible for blocks to support multiple layouts. Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella said the plan is to introduce more layouts, such as “grid” and “absolute positioning container.” Adding “flex” layout support for the group block is the first step towards proving how multi-layout options can work in the block editor. “In the previous WordPress release, we introduced the layout config and the __experimentalLayout prop for inner blocks,” Benguella said. “The initial reason for these was to make alignments and content widths more declarative for themes. While this was an ambitious goal on its own and a hard one to achieve for the default layout, the goal has always been to absorb and support more kinds of layouts in the editor than the regular vertical list of blocks.” This experimental flex layout support can be useful for theme developers and makes sense in certain use cases with the Cover block, headers, social icons, columns, and other applications. The layout switcher UI is hidden in this release while the Gutenberg team works on a better design and wording for the feature. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWordPress.org Meta Team Fixes Search Snippet Issue with Download Page Promoting WordPress.com – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Yesterday evening Chris Klosowski, Sandhills Development Partner and Director of Technology, tweeted out a problem with the way WordPress.org’s Download page was appearing in Google’s Search results snippets when searching for “WordPress.” Underneath the link, the preview text referenced WordPress.com’s hosting: WordPress.com is the easiest way to create a free website or blog. It’s a powerful hosting platform that grows with you. We offer expert support for your WordPress site. Others reported seeing the intended description when Googling, which is designated in the Schema.org tag in the head tag but not printed on the page: “Download WordPress today, and get started on creating your website with one of the most powerful, popular, and customizable platforms in the world.” The reference to WordPress.com came from the hosting providers listed at the top of the page, where it randomly displays two upon each page refresh. The Download button used to be at the top of the Download page but ever since mid-January 2021, it has been pushed further down below recommended hosts. This is presumably to help people who want to set up a self-hosted site but don’t know where to get started. “Google was skipping our defined page descriptions in favor of some in-page content,” WordPress lead developer Dion Hulse said, regarding the issue with the search results snippet. The WordPress Meta team was alerted to the problem and quickly put a solution in place to encourage Google to look somewhere else on the page for the main content. “The Download page has info about the mobile apps and hosting for WordPress,” core contributor Corey McKrill wrote in the commit message. “These are in section container elements, which might be the reason that Google is using the content of the hosting container for its search result snippet, instead of the meta description tag. By changing these containers to aside elements, hopefully Google will get the message that they don’t contain the most pertinent information for that page.” The meta team also marked the hosting recommendations on the download page as exempt from being included in the Google search result snippet, so that it doesn’t pull text from these aside elements. Here is what the updated search result snippet looks like after the changes were put in place: Klosowski’s tweet highlighted the perennial tension that arises from the confusion between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The recommended hosting page has always been a contentious bit of real estate on WordPress.org but especially now that hosting companies are also prominently promoted on the Download page. https://twitter.com/cklosowski/status/1413264854643736577 In this situation, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress’ Executive Director, quickly acknowledged that the search snippet promoting WordPress.com was in fact a problem, heading off those who might promote the notion that it was intentional. The Meta team acted swiftly to resolve the issue and return the snippet to its former meta description. It is not known how long Google has been pulling from the text in the recommended hosts sections to populate the snippet, but the code is now more explicit about the fact that those companies are not the most important content on the Download page. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingGoogle Launches Search Console Insights, a User-Friendly Content Performance Overview – WordPress Tavern
[ad_1] Google Analytics is powerful if you know exactly what kind of metrics you want to investigate, it but can be overwhelming if you just need a simple overview of your traffic and referrals. Search Console Insights is a new tool from the Google Web Creators team that is aimed at making content performance easier to understand at a glance. It combines data from Search Console and Google Analytics for a user-friendly overview of important metrics for content creators. Search Console Insights can help users quickly ascertain which pieces are their best performing content, how new pieces are performing, and how people are discovering the site. Clicking on the little academic cap icon offers more information about understanding the data and tips for improving content engagement and performance. The first section shows a site’s content performance trend for the past 28 days using page views and page view duration. The next card displays a carousel of new content with page views, average page view duration, and badges for content that has high average duration compared to other content on the site. Other cards include the most popular content within the past 28 days, top traffic channels, top Google Search queries, referring links from other websites, and social media. The performance cards are not configurable but they give you a starting point if you want to dig deeper into Google Analytics. It would be helpful if each graph was linked to more data where you could adjust the date range. Search Console Insights doesn’t include all the features unless you are using Google Analytics and associate it with your site’s Search Console property. Users can access the tool’s overview page by visiting the link directly. In the near future, Search Console Insights will be available in the iOS and Android Google apps when you tap your profile picture. The tool is now in beta but Google plans to roll the experience out gradually to all Search Console users in the coming days. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingProgrammatically Search WordPress Posts By Date Range
[ad_1] TL;DR: The code shared in this post shows how you can modify the query that runs on the All Posts page so you can limit how you search posts to a specified date range. It’s been a little while since I last wrote about using the post_where filter for modifying the search query that runs on a given page, such as the All Posts area of WordPress. But given the fact that there are a variety of uses for retrieving posts – and custom post types – in different ways, there’s a variety of ways to use this single filter. Search Posts By Date Range In order to search posts by date range, here’s what needs to happen: Register a callback with the posts_where filter, Make sure the function accepts the string for where and the instance of WP_Query that’s running on the page Get todays date and time and the date and time for four weeks ago Prepend the where clause to constrain the results to the date return the updated query. <?php add_filter( ‘posts_where’, function ( string $where, WP_Query $query ) : string { global $wpdb; $todays_date = gmdate( ‘Y-m-d H:i:s’, strtotime( ‘now’ ) ); $four_weeks_ago = gmdate( ‘Y-m-d H:i:s’, strtotime( ‘-4 weeks’ ) ); $prepend = $wpdb->prepare( ” AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_date > %s”, $four_weeks_ago ); $prepend .= $wpdb->prepare( ” AND {$wpdb->posts}.post_date < %s”, $todays_date ); return $prepend . $where; }, 101, 2 ); The result of this function is a modified query that restricts the posts that are returned by the specified date and time. Namely, four weeks ago up to the hour, minute, and second. You can change this by updating the -4 weeks string passed to the strtotime function (but I recommend reviewing the PHP manual page linked below to understand how this function works with language like this). References [ad_2] Source link
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