Sitemap not displaying guest authors

Hi,

We can see this is an example of a Guest Author: https://www.paradigmshift.com.pk/author/waleed-yawer/. In looking at the code we can see a noindex tag is appearing on the page. See image: https://pasteboard.co/JlL89wK.png. That tag needs to be removed. However, we are not sure if this is an issue with Yoast or Guest Author.

We would like some more information.

1. Can you confirm you are using WordPress 5.4.2? You can check by clicking on the W in the top left and selecting About. If you need to update, please check with your host provider.?Please know that if you are using an older version of WordPress Core you may experience unexpected behavior with Yoast.?This guide explains more:?https://yoast.com/why-we-dont-support-old-wordpress-versions/.

2. Are all your non-Yoast plugins and themes also updated?

3. If you go to SEO-Search Appearance-Archives and click on Author. Please verify that it says YES for both parts. See image: https://pasteboard.co/JlL8Vus.png

If you do that does the Guest Author page appear on the sitemaps: https://www.paradigmshift.com.pk/sitemap_index.xml?

Yes, my wordpress and my plugins are all updated.

I had “Show archives for authors without posts in search results?” as No, but I changed it to Yes. I now see the authors who have not been published (but only those authors that were registered via wordpress). I do not see Waleed Yawer for example since he was added using guest author.

Hi,

We are not sure how the Guest Author plugin works, exactly. However, if you go to Users-All Users and click on the users that are not showing on the sitemap and scroll down can you confirm the “Do not Allow” button is unclicked?

See image: https://pasteboard.co/JlLheu7.jpg

Weirdly enough when one goes to Users > All Users only the users that have an account are shown, not the guest authors. The guest authors page can be accessed from Users > Guest Authors and obviously, in that section, there is no such option.

This is what I see when I go to Users > Gust Authors and click on a user.

https://pasteboard.co/JlLkmF2.png

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by hbk747.

I want to apologize because I just realized it is not the “Guest Authors” plugin but a plugin called “Co-authors plus” that lets me create guest authors. The rest is the same. I was just mistaken about which plugin it was.

Hope you can help

@hbk747 That is strange that they aren’t appearing under All Users. Can you please check whether the plugin is showing any of it’s options under SEO>Search Appearance>Taxonomies?

Unfortunately I do not see any of the plugins options.

I see “Show Categories” which is turned on

I see “Show SEO settings” which is on also

“Show tags in search results” is off/no

and “Remove the categories prefix” is on “remove”.

Hi @hbk747,

Thank you for following up.

We’ve installed the Co-Author Plus plugin on a local testing environment and it looks like the plugin creates a separate post type called guest-author for the co-authors that are not getting a WordPress user account. You can find this under SEO → Search Appearance → Content Types (tab).

However, it looks like the plugin does not make the post type public and does not have any archive.

In order to make these changes, you’d need to alter the plugin. We recommend you to reach out to their support forums of the plugin for advice. We do see that the forums are not really active, however :-(.

hi @jeroenrotty

Thanks for the prompt response. I understand. Right now I am trying different guest author/co author plugins to see if any of them display authors public. Can you recommend any guest author plugin that would allow yoast to display the guest authors?

Hi @hbk747,

We’re not really familiar with any. Sorry.

Hi,

Just curious.

I was checking out Yoast settings. I went to SEO > Search Appearance > Content Type
and there is a Guest Authors section there. I thought maybe it might be turned off but the “Show Guest Authors in search results” and “Show SEO settings for Guest Authors” are both turned on.

Is this not relevant?

Hi @hbk747,

This looks a little more complicated than the “Show in search results” setting because the Co-Authors plugin also uses a hidden ‘author’ taxonomy to associate posts with the guest author. Yoast SEO doesn’t display non-public taxonomies in the sitemap.

We tested this by manually changing the author taxonomy’s “public” value from false to true and we found that the guest author archive pages appeared in a separate author sitemap. This means that you’ll need a code change from the Co-Author plugin developer to make the plugin compatible with Yoast SEO. You’re welcome to let us know if you get a fix or workaround from the developer.

Hope this helps explain the issue a bit more.

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.