lesb55

OK – found the problem:

Dependency issue with JS minify, Daves Live Search plugin.

Rearranged the order of JS minify files in W3 Total Cache (so daves live search is towards the last to be minified).

Now icons are all changing correctly on hover.

Remembered that this issue only happened after an update of daves live search plugin.

Thanks for that very comprehensive help page Mike!

Sort of seems counter-intuitive that the ‘Return-path address’ should be DIFFERENT to the ‘Email to address’.

I’ve changed the return-path address now so that it is different, will update to V4.0.17 and test again.

https://www.lusanbidets.com.au

Great you found the problem Jeff.

I’ve not had either of these websites ever running as multi sites.
Both these websites are on an xen VPS server (WHM) with separate cPanel accounts.
Some things just ain’t worth the time to find out ‘the why’.

Na- the website was re-duplicated and your credentials got wiped.

I have now added the same credentials again, you should be able to login again OK.

Hi Jeff,
I can give you access to our duplicate (test) website if you want to see this behavior.

I can’t seem to get past captcha for the contact form on your website.

@ mani4astro

Forget about adding the meta date to your header.php.
I have since found out that Google bots pay almost no attention to meta date tags (these days).

The other advice still holds.
You really do need to be using Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin, then turn off caching in both the DMOZ or Yahoo directories.

What code you would need to add, to which theme templates, will depend on your theme.
Better for me to direct you to a post by John Lamansky, who explains this better than I can:

remove post dates

And this one:
remove date from search results

Finally;
Updating a post will not stop google from using the ‘first published’ date.
If all else fails; you can change that troublesome ‘first published’ date (to something more recent), on the actual post page in WP admin.

Latest version W3 Total Cache(0.9.3)

I can give access to our test website to check this behavior if you need Jeff.

Sorry about the duplicate posts Jan – I tried to edit the original, but it somehow got reposted each time.

Anyways –
I obviously entered something wrong with my first CDN effort, but I wasn’t about to try and replicate the deletion trick; it took over 1 hour to re-upload all the files & folders via FTP.

My 2nd attempt:
Exercising a little more care this time; I did get a self hosted CDN running OK on a cookieless subdomain.

I was however disappointed to see negligible improvement in page load time. (I used Firefox for the tests, & I realize results can vary quite a bit between browsers)

Obviously a CDN is supposed to be just that – not a pretend one on the same server.
This is a fairly fast VPS, running DSO with Mod Ruid 2.

With shared hosting, a self-hosted CDN may be more worthwhile.

One thing I did find out:

A self-hosted CDN with 1 subdomain is marginally faster.
A self-hosted CDN with 2 subdomains, is actually SLOWER.

So if anybody is wondering about setting up multiple subdomains for a self-hosted CDN; don’t bother (in my experience anyway).

Thanks Jeff,

I tried everything else but the obvious-

You’d think a bloke would remember- after this having this exact same issue with the shopp plugin!

As a reminder for dopey people, it might be good to include a note in the plugin to this effect:

“If you have a problem with some plugins not working correctly with Plugin Organizer; try changing the order of these plugins, so they load before Plugin Organizer.”

For the record:
We have 35 active plugins on our website, but using Plugin Organizer to optimize which plugins are loaded on individual pages, our home page yslow score is: 95/100, pagespeed score: 97/100
(W3 Total Cache with APC also helps to achieve this good result)

One more thing I forgot:

WordPress SEO> General Settings:

Add noodp meta robots tag sitewide: checked
Add noydir meta robots tag sitewide: checked

This is to stop the intellectually-challenged googlebot from using the oldest possible date it can find; cached in either the DMOZ or Yahoo directories.

@neuroticartist,
In WP admin, Shopp, Setup>Preferences you will see a new section: Shopp Arrange.

Check: ‘Force custom order instead of priced based ordering’.
I don’t use ‘Force custom order for Shopp Categories’ but I guess it works the same way.

Now the shipping option you have saved FIRST, is selected automatically (by default) when the customer goes through checkout.

(Normally Shopp selects the lowest price by default)

This has been a bug-bear for me, right since the very first inception of Shopp.
I need a free shipping option to be available for certain items.
However that means that the free shipping option is automatically selected by default, for every customer that goes through checkout.

You wouldn’t believe the number of refunds I have had to perform over the years, because a customer just rushed through; assuming the shopping cart would select the correct shipping option.

Can’t believe this has not been made part of the shopp core functions.

Really Great work Clif!

Update

As stated at the start of this thread: we were kicked out of Google search results for over 1 month; because Google serps was prepending the date our blog was started: Jan 23, 2009 – to the start of our meta description.
Even AFTER implementing the above changes; as soon as I activate Yoast plugin: WP SEO Video, Google starts showing that #$%@ date again! (and we are dumped a page or two back in the search results – AGAIN)

Joost if you are reading this: I submitted a support request for this PAID plugin and got this reply:

Hi Les,

I’ll forward this to Joost again then, but it might be some time before he answers due to holidays and workload ??

Kind regards,

Thijs de Valk
Consultant at Yoast

I have since added the following code to my functions.php file:
add_filter( 'wpseo_video_show_date_in_snippet','__return_false');

If this code does not work, I will have no option but permanently disable WP SEO Video.
This plugin is supposed to help your SEO – not stuff your rankings!

@ Joost,

Never mind, you’re a busy man.

For others out there who might be plagued by this problem:

Yoast’s SEO plugins are quite powerful, and after activation you may see changes to meta title/descriptions which were not being picked up by Google serps previously.

This problem is related to what’s contained in your theme files.

That annoying date at the start of our meta description was the date our blog was originally started!
Nothing had been changed in header.php, index.php or single.php to make the date start appearing – only activation of Yoast’s Video SEO plugin.

Here’s how I fixed it:

Most importantly; I needed to remove the date completely from all pages.

I didn’t want to remove the date entirely from posts – just the serps.

I did want to remove the date from posts: 6 months after first published date.

I also wanted to remove “Last Updated” time on Google serps – but have this always displayed on the post.

First step is to hide the time in javascript so Google can no longer read it. This means it will still show on the post, but not serps.

This is the code I now have in my theme’s index.php and single.php files:

<p id="author"><strong>Written by:</strong> <?php the_author() ?>?<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">document.write("<?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>");</script><br><strong>Last updated:</strong> <time datetime="<?php the_modified_time('Y-m-d'); ?>"><?php the_modified_time('F jS, Y'); ?></time></p>
Of course your theme may be using “get_time” or something else similar instead of “the_time”.

Second step is to use the ‘Date Exclusion’ plugin, to stop the published date appearing on posts after 6 months.

Some really useful posts about this:
https://www.wpsquare.com/remove-date-meta-description-search-results/
https://www.dollarshower.com/how-to-remove-date-stamp-from-google-serp-description/

If you are still having problems, you can always go for the “Big Hammer” of funtions.php code, mentioned in that first article.

Why have the “Last Updated” date showing?

This article explains the issues around removing dates fairly well (of course your individual website needs may differ):
https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/why-you-should-not-remove-dates-from-your-wordpress-blog-posts/

Google obviously puts a lot of emphasis on dates, but as search engine spiders are not smart enough to differentiate between dates (and pick the right one); removing their ability to read dates is a good idea.

Who wants every page of your website showing the date you first started your blog?

Removing the date completely (for your readers) may not be such a great idea.

On-ya’ Jeff,

That’s Aussie slang for ‘good on you mate’ (you’ve done something really great!)

Still problems Jeff;

Version 3.0.8 gives me this error on activation:

Fatal error: Call to a member function get_page_permastruct() on a non-object in /home/lusanbid/public_html/wp-includes/link-template.php on line 271

(Running WP 3.5.2)

PS: You still have full access to our test website, as per a previous issue.

Feel free to check out this problem there (www.lusanbidets.com) if you wish.