[Plugin: WordPress SEO by Yoast] Yoast adding SITE NAME to my Title Tag?

Heya AnthonyDaconti,

Can you post your site URL so we can check it out? Thanks a million!

Im having a similar issue, my site title is being repeated by yoast…

https://www.livingthecollegelife.com

Same issue, good to see all the responses here.

I’ve got the same issue.

WordPress version: 3.5.1
WordPress SEO version: 1.4.7

My website: https://www.morellavastervik.se/

Screenshot showing my issue: https://tinypic.com/r/2zg9ifq/5
The words “Restaurang Morella” (swedish) is being repeated.

Thanks in advance!

Just for subscribing to the thread. Missed the checkbox (new to the forums).

@dannedude
It’s a theme conflict – from what I can see, your theme “
Gusteau” – from Theme Forest has a function to include the site title, which is causing the duplicate (It’s a common problem).

From the Theme info page at Theme Forest “SEO optimized (custom meta keyword and meta description for each page, post or menu item)”

Two possible solutions:
1. Try removing the Yoast title template code %%sitename%% from wherever it is in the plugin settings.

2. BETTER OPTION: Look in your theme settings for a way to turn off all theme SEO functions.
Sorry I can’t tell you how – it’s a commercial theme so I cannot download it to figure this out for you

If you can’t find the method in the theme settings, contact the theme support. It’s a commercial theme so they owe you support for this

If you are still stuck for an answer, post on this thread. I’ll give you another option as a last resort

@mikeotgaar

Thanks for your fast reply!

I tried what you suggested, but didn’t do the trick I’m afraid.

1. Tried deleting the %%sitename%% everywhere but that didn’t do it. The area for changing the sitetitle “code” in the plugin it says the following: “You can specify the page title and meta description for the home page by editing (edit) it here?” and then it’s a link to the page “home” in wordpress where I need to edit it.
But even though I edit it where they tell me to, somehow they collect the site title from somewhere else making it a double.

2. Couldn’t find no function in the theme for turning off SEO. And I never get any replies from the theme owner for some reason (yeah I know, real bad support..)

Let me know if I was not clear enough as my english is not super awesome!

Any suggestions?

Thanks again,
D

Hey Dannedude,

The best way to deal with this issue is to:

1. Make sure you are using a child theme so changes you make to the header.php file won’t get overwritten should the theme receive an update. And,
2. Create a new header.php file in your child theme folder (just create a copy from the parent theme) and then replace whatever code you find between the title tags in the head section. Like this:
   <title><?php whatever code you find in your existing theme ?></title>

   Replace that with:
   <title><?php wp_title(''); ?></title>

If you have a specific requirement for a separator character, just place that character between the two ticks inside the parenthesis. Like this:

wp_title('|');

This is what I have to do on most of the sites which I install WordPress SEO. But I feel it’s worth it because it gives me control over those SEO aspects and takes it out of the realm of the theme.

Hope that helps.

Cheers ??

@james Kirk

Thanks a lot! That did it for me.

However, I’m not sure how I go about making my current theme into a parent theme and then start using a child theme “on top of it”.

Do you have any good source on the best way to go about making that happen?

Best,
D

Hey! Glad you got a start in the right direction.

A few things:

1. The parent theme is really “on top”. The child theme pulls from the parent.
2. You don’t have to do anything to the parent theme! It just is
3. I placed a link to the Child Theme info here in the Codex in the previous comment!

Cheers x

@james Kirk

Oh, I missed the link in your previous post!

Great, I’ve solved the child theme part now. And got it working with a style.css file.

But I dont understand what I need to do to be able to change parts of the header.php!

I tried adding a header.php file in my child theme and then just simply adding the code that you gave me, and saved. That messed the whole website up.

How do I go about doing this? I’m sure it’s some obvious way that I’m missing but can’t figure it out..

Thanks a lot!

Best,
D

I also noticed now, that the part about messing up my website when adding the header.php stuff in the child theme – was permanent. It is stilled messed up.

Appreciate a fast reply on how to solve this (like some sort of “backing up” the time before I did the change.

The website is for a client (and is live), very stupid of me to not be doing this on a backup..

Thanks again,
D

Ok, I solved the “permanent mess-up” for now. Just activated the parent theme.

But somehow the child theme is messed up (even though I deleted the header.php file in it).

Sorry for all the posts all at once. Just got scared there for a moment lol.

Best,
D

It can certainly get scary when our client’s sites, aka our paycheck, is on the line!

Not really sure what you might have done, dannedude. We would have to see the code.

When you created and activated the child theme was everything working groovy like? Then, when you added a copy of the header.php file to your child theme (it was a copy from the parent theme, yes?) that is when things went south? I.e., “messed up”?

We would likely need to see a copy of the header.php file you were using in your child things when the site stopped behaving the way you wanted it to.

Cheers! :)

@james kirk

Yeah, definitely! hehe

This is what I did:
1. I added an empty file called header.php
2. I added the code “<title><?php wp_title(”); ?></title>” into the file (this is wrong I know that now, but I misunderstood you first)
3. I refreshed my website and it was messed up (obviously)
4. Deleted the file and added a new empty header.php file
5. Went to the header.php file in the parent theme and copied the code
6. Pasted the code into the new header.php in the child theme, and them refreshed the website.
7. To my amazement it was still messed up.

Need more information, let me know!

Best regards,
Daniel