How is this author link gathered in metadata?

  • When I share my website in a Discord chat room – I get the following rich metadata.

    My main question – is – how does it know about the ‘author’ and how to link to it. I don’t have any author pages set up yet – and I’m not really sure how this metadata is being collected. I don’t see any links to that in the source.

    — (since I can’t add an image)

    
<em>https://perpetual.education
Perpetual Education: A new class of Design education [1]
sheriffderek [2]
Design for The Web: The holistic course for people who want to be m... [3]
A new class in Design education. Keep learning... until you die. [4]</em>

---

[1] links to https://perpetual.education
[1] I'm not sure where that exact copy is coming from
[2] links to https://perpetual.education/author/sheriffderek/
[3] title + links as expected
[4] description as expected
(there's also a share image)
    • This topic was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by sheriffderek.
    • This topic was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not an Developing with WordPress topic

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    You should ask in the dedicated support channel for whichever module is generating the structured data for your site. Normally, for any particular post, an author link can be constructed with the post author’s login name appended to domain/author/. The link leads to an archive of the user’s posts. You don’t need to set anything up, it’s default behavior.

    In the case of the site’s home page, if it’s a so called “static” page, who ever authored that page could be the apparent site’s “author”. If the home page is a blog listing, I’ve no idea where the “author” is coming from, which is why you should ask the responsible module’s devs.

    Thread Starter sheriffderek

    (@sheriffderek)

    The page is the ‘index’ page.

      
<?php if ( is_page('landing') ) {
    include('templates/pages/welcome.php');
} ?>

    You should ask in the dedicated support channel for whichever module is generating the structured data for your site

    Can you tell me more about this? I have never thought of WordPress in this way. I only build very basic custom themes and use very little of the framework defaults.

    I suppose the ‘sheriffderek’ user did create that page. And checking the page-specific metadata (ACF) – that does show [1] and clears that up. Thank you. That makes sense to me, but I don’t see anything in the generated HTML to tell that story.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by sheriffderek.
    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Yeah, what code does behind the scenes is not always clear from the resulting HTML. It’s often a “black box” process. At least WP is open source and those who can make sense of the underlying code can open that box and examine how it works.

    WP by default with a twenty* theme and no plugins does not generate structured data. Such data is typically added with some sort of SEO plugin. If you’re not sure which module is the cause, you may need to selectively deactivate plugins and maybe even switch to a twenty* theme to see which action causes the structured data to go away.

    A good, well written plugin ought to have some mechanism for altering which fields are output, at least for the home page. While a settings option would be nice, sometimes the mechanism is in the form of a filter hook which requires some custom code to utilize. The module’s developers are in the best position to tell you how to accomplish this and to consider improving their code if no such mechanism is available.

    Thread Starter sheriffderek

    (@sheriffderek)

    So, just to be clear – this website is not built with any pre-made theme – and does not extend any theme. Are the modules you are talking about “plugins?” Or are they part of the core? This site doesn’t use any plugin that I could imagine builds any structured data. I am not using Yoast or anything like that. If it’s not in the HTML – then where could it possibly come from?

    I’m using utility type plugins:

    • Limit Login Attempts Reloaded
    • WP Migrate DB Pro
    • Disable Comments
    • Custom Post Type UI
    • Classic Editor
    • Advanced Custom Fields PRO
    • ACF to REST API
    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    I used the term “module” because it could be a plugin or theme which produces structured data. I agree the plugins you listed do not sound like they would do so. I am not deeply familiar with them so I wouldn’t wager a huge amount they do not. If you have a custom theme, I’d imagine it’s the source of the structured data. The one thing I am sure of is that WP core does not do so.

    Thread Starter sheriffderek

    (@sheriffderek)

    OK. I definitely started with zero files – and built the theme up myself, so – there’s no mysterious stuff in there. I’ll turn off all the plugins do some tests. The only other thing I can think of – is that somehow – the rich data is coming from the JSON API or something. Thank you. I’ll report back if I find any leads.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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