Optimize Site and Count Links not working with Firefox ESR

Hi Jon,

Can confirm that this is happening with only Yoast SEO and a default theme activated? We’d like to rule out any JavaScript errors or a plugin or theme conflict causing the problem.

If so, based on the information you provided, we expect this to be a bug. We’re actively using the bug tracking on our GitHub repository so your best next step would be to create a new issue for our developers at?https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/new.

You will need an account to create a new issue. If this is your first bug report, please check out:?https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-to-write-a-good-bug-report/.

@priscillamc Thanks for your reply.

I will help and do some more tests on my server and will debug it for your team.

If it does get very technical I will post it to GitHub (I have an account)

Will let you know soon.

Regards, Jon

Hi Jon,

We’ll leave this issue open for the next week in case you have any updates. We appreciate your help with this!

@priscillamc I will get back to you as soon as I have more time free and my servers are updated.
Have a good weekend,
Jon

@jonhopstra Thanks for your reply and please let us know if you require any further assistance.

@devnihil @priscillamc

Hello, here is some update:

1) I installed the ESR 90.9 version again using:

https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/60.9.0esr/win32/nl/

I made sure it does not auto-update as that will remove the /feed option.

I did my test again by installing WordPress on localhost using Xampp.

After login to WP Dashboard I import all my options again from all my default plugins

(Plugins are unpacked by my WP Builder for Xampp)

8 Plugin options are Imported to the database

Now, update all plugins and let it finish

Go to plugins and activate all

Close some notices

Visit website and make sure there is at least 1 demo blog post

Hit publish

Visit the blog, all looks good

Back to WP Dashboard and press Yoast message to update/optimize

After 2 seconds the popup by Firefox exits out and on Yoast section for optimizing says it failed

Try again later

Press Count Links

Same problem. It shows the modal for 2 seconds and exits out with the same error, even on the Yoast Tools (wpseo_tools) / Extra section

Wait sometime, open the site and do some scrolling and try again

Make sure WP Cache is disabled

Make sure Autoptimize is not setup

Try again, same errors

2) Update Firefox to the latest version

(Problem is gone)

3) Do the above using Chrome latest version

(Problem is gone)

4) Use my Blisk Development Browser based on Chrome

(No problem, see screenshots below)

https://ibb.co/kSK1qDS

https://ibb.co/StwxCm7

I hope this information helps

Regard, Jon

Hi @jonhopstra ,

Thank you for sharing this information.

You mentioned that the optimization works when using Chrome but not in Firefox. Are you working on a single website? We ask because you only need to run the optimization once and when it’s done, it should not ask you again not unless you reset the indexables and the link counter (using Yoast Test Helper).
If you did not perform a reset, but it keeps on asking you to optimize the site, then that means that optimization did not finish successfully when you ran it using Chrome.

Can you please check if you’re getting any javascript errors on Chrome? Also, are you now running Yoast SEO 15.0?

@jerparx Thanks for your reply.

Well, this problem does not happen on the Chrome browser, only on this version of Firefox and 1 version later as well. The latest version of Firefox does not have this error.
The problem has to do with the popup/modal box for counting links and optimizing as they seem to exit out with the error that it cannot complete the process and to try it again later.

The site I am doing all these tests on are test sites build on localhost that are every time 100% identical. Same plugins, same theme, same settings etc. I use these setups to debug and help plugin makers and of course to build my own sites to go live with.

If I finish all routine tasks in WordPress after activation of plugin’s and closing notices, I always do the Yoast optimization as last.

I cleared my WP Dashboard to only have Yoast optimization box left there and did 2 tests.

1 test pressing the button on this box and one test going to Yoast settings and into extra/tools section and pressing the button there.

Both have no effect. Both situations the popup that counts the database items gets exit out on this Firefox version witch is a same as everything works perfect on this version and I like using this Firefox version for debugging.

But this does not happen in Chrome, at least not the latest version and that is like so many my main browser of course.

If you can tell me how to debug JavaScript errors in Firefox and when this needs to take place (on the popup box I have only 2 seconds before it closes the modal popup for counting links and database) So if I know were I need to look, I’m happy to report it.

I could also test setting WordPress to debug mode but I have no idea if that gives anymore important data we can use for this.

But I will set it to full debug mode for my next test and see if any data gets written to the debug logs that can be of any help.

Hi,

We understand that this issue doesn’t occur on the latest version of the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser, but occurs specifically with Firefox ESR 60.9.0. The latest version of Firefox ESR 78.3.1. We don’t recommend using older versions of WordPress, plugins, themes, or browsers, in general.

Would it be possible for you to try and run the Indexables feature via WP-CLI? You can check it out here — https://developer.yoast.com/features/wp-cli/reindex-indexables/

@mikes41720 Hi Mike, thanks for this.

I will get into CLI. To be real with you, I am a bit of a non traditional tester and debugger as I just build my site on localhost using my own PHP WP Builder and it works great for the things I need to do with it. So I am not into GitHub or even CLI, I know as hobby developer I need to study that and learn that.

I had the feeling that REST API Endpoint should not be turned off in Yoast SEO settings as this would be needed for CLI in the future. I just did not see a benefit for just getting sites up having all the same settings from the start and using CLI for that.

But I understand that you dev’s advice me to get into CLI right? I am not on Mac and just have Windows Xampp and basic Notepad++ installed (as little as possible) but will this be enough or do I need to setup a lot of commend line options and install packages on my Windows system?

Of course if this CLI is really handy I will program my own PHP scripts to maybe make it portable so that I do not need to install any software. But I have no idea I need to find out what CLI is and what benefit it has to pre-setup my 9 plugins that I always use for every site build.

Thanks for the docs I will study that.

I wanted to make a new topic but maybe it is oke to have it in this one…. If you activate Yoast and leave all settings default… Go to All posts… you see the little icon on the far right side? I think it is next to meta description or focus keyword..

Have your mouse above it… see it cuts off on the Chrome browser screen?

On mouse hover I mean : )

The popup that tell’s you about what the feature is. I think if you CSS it a little to the left or force it to be inside the browser area it will be readable again and does not cut off.

I did not want to make a new topic for this but if needed so I can share a image about it, I of course will do that.

For now I will read what CLI is about.

If there is a GitHub threat about what the count links and add posts to database does when one presses the buttons in Yoast SEO, could you share this with me so maybe I can program some PHP script to do this manually.

I know Yoast SEO plugin when pressing count links and optimization counts the posts/pages and finds links in these posts right? Well if I know the MySQL command for that I could make a little PHP script that does the same so that it will work in this Firefox browser version.

The database items/keys are there on plugin activation (they are all there even with this older browser) It is just the scanning and adding these items into wp_options for Yoast.

Regards, Jon

Hi @jonhopstra

Thanks for bringing the display problem with the Received internal link column’s tooltip to our attention. There is an existing open issue to improve the display in responsive views, so we’ve added a note about the columns.

The plugin code is well-organized and commented, so you can start there to understand exactly how the plugin works. The kind of customization that you mentioned doing in your own scripts is a bit out of the scope of the support we can offer here in the forums, unfortunately.

If you’d like to contribute a solution to Yoast SEO to fix the issue in this browser, you’re welcome to send us a Github pull request with your bug fixes or new features here: https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo. Please be sure to read the contribution guidelines.

If the information that you’re looking for about the database and the way Yoast SEO functions isn’t in the developer documentation or you have a suggestion that will help you, you’re also welcome to make a feature request for our developers to consider.

@priscillamc Thanks for this!

If you could send me the GitHhub link were the part of count links and optimize site and database tables were discussed than I will know were in the plugin I have to look for and what PHP file. Maybe if I find something handy I could share my code and have your team look at it to maybe not use a popup but just have a silent database process.
And if there is no GutHub, I will dig into it no problem.
Thanks for the great support!
Regards.

We are afraid to say that we are unable to share the exact PHP file links for the internal links and database tables that are responsible for managing them in the Yoast SEO plugin.

However, we can confirm that you can find everything you’ll need directly at the Yoast SEO GitHub Development Repository.

@mazedulislamkhan Thank you. I will find a way and if I find something useful I will share it in GitHub. I think this is a problem with Firefox and not really Yoast so I will close this here, I just install it using Chrome and then do work on the site using Firefox, no problem and thanks for the great support here.

@mazedulislamkhan I have to reopen this as I found some maybe useful data for this error.

Besides, I was so happy to see the popup and count links extra popup gone so I did test it again with this version of Firefox, just to make sure it was or was not the popup.

But have a look below (I have REST API on) I also have not run the following:

remove_action( ‘xmlrpc_rsd_apis’, ‘rest_output_rsd’ );
remove_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘rest_output_link_wp_head’ );
remove_action( ‘template_redirect’, ‘rest_output_link_header’, 11, 0 );
remove_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘rest_output_link_wp_head’ );
remove_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘wp_oembed_add_discovery_links’ );

And …

add_filter( ‘xmlrpc_enabled’, ‘__return_false’ );
add_filter( ‘wp_headers’, ‘preperform_remove_x_pingback’ );
add_filter( ‘pings_open’, ‘__return_false’, 9999) ;

Meaning I have not add these features what I normally do load but for this test I just used basic WordPress setup so having all default data in head block.

Also made sure Yoast REST API is active (Also I maybe should not remove REST from head right? otherwise Yoast REST API call’s might not work or does the Tag in head block have no effect on Yoast plugin for REST API?)

Have a look below:

It is active in above settings.

Opening Network Inspection in Firefox ESR below:

See the 403 error?

(I have no ad block, not added any data to block sites/domains in hosts file for Windows and no firewall rules etc)

Digging a bit deeper, see below:

My current knowledge stops here as I have not really studied how cookies or nonce works in WordPress, maybe I should but yeah.

But maybe you can see what is going on and why this particular version of Firefox gives errors when pressing the button in Yoast.

It was a lot easier to debug as there is no popup in 15.1 anymore which is great.

Any ideas?

If not no problem, I just had some time free and found this out and wanted to share it as I love the plugin so much and liked to help a bit.

Regards.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by Jon.