The SEO Framework + Polylang: Meta Title & Description

I also add a message I wrote in that other support thread:

I looked for another way to do it. I am using Divi, so there is a Category Builder and in there, I entered the Title and Description in the SEO Framework Meta. But it’s totally ignored by the system (even though I disabled SEO Framework from doing anything on the homepage).

Actually, it is starting to look like a bug in SEO Framework?

Went back to using the Home Description in the SEO Framework settings. It works fine with Yoast, for some reason, and after some debugging with SEO Framework, I found it tricky to get the right meta description, there are many conditions but the order was odd, and there weren’t any filters to do it in a clean way. So I did it like this:

// generate-description.class.php 
// At the beginning of generate_the_description()
// To support Divi Category Builder as Homepage
if ( $this->is_front_page_by_id( $args['id'] ) ) {
  $description = $this->get_option( 'homepage_description' );
  return function_exists( 'pll__' ) ? pll__( $description ) : $description;
}

For Polylang, the string also needs to be declared for it. I did so in my functions.php.

// In the functions.php or somewhere else
if ( function_exists( 'the_seo_framework' ) ) {
  $the_seo_framework = the_seo_framework();
  $description = $the_seo_framework->get_option( 'homepage_description' );
  pll_register_string( 'homepage_description', $description ?: 'Empty description!', 'seo_framework', false );
}

It works, but certainly not ideal. I will need to hack the plugin code every time there is a release so I hope we can find a more elegant solution.

Hi @tigroumeow,

I’m sorry for all the work you’ve been put up with!

I do want to clear some things up before I head into the issue.

Polylang provides its in-house patches for Yoast SEO. Therefore you’ll see better compatibility (although superficially). In fact, what you’ve done has been included there for Yoast.
> See a few of their patches here.

The SEO Framework has two filters available to easily adjust the description:

the_seo_framework_custom_field_description
the_seo_framework_generated_description

With those filters, you don’t have to edit the plugin, but you can instead do this from your self-managed files ??
The first returns the manual description, whereas the second returns the auto-generated description.

Basically, this should work, too:

add_filter( 'the_seo_framework_custom_field_description', 'my_tsf_pll__' );
add_filter( 'the_seo_framework_generated_description', 'my_tsf_pll__' );
add_filter( 'the_seo_framework_pro_add_title', 'my_tsf_pll__' ); // this will change in 3.1 due to its inefficiency.
function my_tsf_pll__( $input ) {
	return $input && function_exists( 'pll__' ) ? pll__( $input ) : $input;
};

With that out of the way, thanks to your thorough efforts, I now understand the underlying compatibility issues and I’ll see if I can turn this into a permanent resolution.
So, I’ve created a feature inclusion request for the next major update:
https://github.com/sybrew/the-seo-framework/issues/257

I hope this all clears things up ?? Cheers!

Hi,

Indeed, this works fine ?? Thanks a lot, that’s much cleaner. Good luck for fixing the overall flow for the title/description generation, it doesn’t seem easy from what I have seen ??

Hi Jordy,

I’m glad it worked for you too!

And yes, the generation methods have become quite a mess since they have their roots set all the way back to WP 3.9 and TSF 1.0. It’s the last thing I want to rush. But it has to be done eventually and carefully.

Thanks for the support and the kind review too ??

You are welcome ?? I also went through a lot with my own plugins in order to make them work on many kinds of installs (especially Media File Renamer and Media Cleaner), so I understand your hard work. You have my full support and I’ll be here to feedback and help.