Yoast SEO plugin is not displaying snippet's or offering editing boxes

[ImagineWD]

Hi, Since the recent update our Yoast SEO plugin is not displaying snippet's or offering editing boxes. See attached image for a screen shot of it. Also I do not see the edit button you mention in your changelog.

I would like to have the titles and description boxes available again but only the keywords are. Please let me know what to do to fix this. Thanks, Joanna

[cdmonline]

I'm seeing exactly the same issue but only on posts, not on pages.

[EefjeS]

The editing boxes on posts have disappeared for me too.

[ghost]

Yup same for me, looks like Yoast SeO just broke something with the 3.1 upgrade - worst thing is someone from Yoast support told me I had to take my site apart (Yoast worked fine before the 3.1 upgrade so it's definitely nothing I've changed...) Very poor support

[cdmonline]

Does the developer see these posts? Is this the most appropriate place to raise the issue? Are they already aware of it?

[ghost]

I've contacted support (and linked them to this thread) but they refused to acknowledge that it was their issue, they said it must be my theme or plugin, however up until the last update of 3.1 there was no challenge with Yoast and my theme or plugins, so it's definitely something they've introduced.

Also support said that until I upgraded they would not support me, which was ironic because I was actually in the process of upgrading, and about to purchase, when I noticed the problem. So now I'm in catch 22, I'm not going to pay for a product that's recently broken because I can't guarantee it'll work OK with my wordpress site any more, and Yoast won't acknowledge that it's their issue that broke the page. I'm not going to pay for a product only to have to remove parts of my site to make it work, especially when it worked fine before.

Terrible customer experience even before purchasing the product. Looks like I'm going to have to remove Yoast if they can't sort this out soon.

[ImagineWD]

Yikes, that is bad news. I was hoping it was just a matter of time before they saw these post's and replied, and of course would have a fix. My problem is we have used them for a long time on our site and have LOTS of pages with carefully crafted seo. If I switch to a different seo plugin, will we lose all that work and have to start over? Do any of you know the answer to that or have a good solution? Thanks!! Joanna

[ghost]

Joanna I'm in the same position, I also have lots of pages with carefully crafted SEO, which makes their support response even worse.

[ghost]

I've just sent Yoast founder @jdevalk a message on twitter directing him to this thread

[ImagineWD]

Please let me know if anyone of them responds with an actual solution. Sigh!

[ghost]

Well I just got a reply from Joost, the founder of Yoast, asking am I a paying customer. No I'm using the free service, and whilst the product is broken (it was fine before 3.1) I'm not likely to become one.

[ghost]

Well my conversation with Joost didn't end too well on Twitter, ultimately the free tool is what it is, and comes with no support which is fair enough since they have a business to run. It's just too bad that the product is broken for me (free or paid) right now so I'm leaving Yoast which is a shame, but I wish them all the best in the future.

I do find it frustrating that plugin developers take a first step approach to blaming other plugins first, or telling the customer it's their site that's causing the issues (without confirming it first). Although I concede that is part of the price paid for using the Wordpress platform that's relying on many different plugins coded by many different developers.

Thankfully my theme has similar functionality to Yoast that I can switch on instead.

[ImagineWD]

Dang! Do you happen to know if we will lose our current meta tags if we switch to a different plugin? Or how about adding in a second one like All In One SEO, is it ok to have two running at the same time? Then maybe we wouldn't have to lose or redo the ones that were previously made in Yoast. Thanks for letting us know what happened.

[jdevalk]

Hey, we'd still love to fix the bug causing all this. I just took issue with the tone that @newrisedigital had in all this. "Directing me" somewhere is not exactly respectful of my time and investments. You might not like us "blaming" other plugins, I said we probably had a conflict with another plugin. This obviously doesn't happen for all our users, so it has to be something that affects you all in this thread, but not everyone. The biggest chance as to the cause of that is simply a plugin.

[ImagineWD]

Please do let us know. I just tried to install it on a brand new site that only has a few minor plugins and it still doesn't show the title and description fields.

[cdmonline]

I just applied the update that was just released - 3.1.1. Hats off to the folk at Yoast for putting so many enhancements and fixes into their updates! Sadly, this update has NOT resolved my problem.

Unfortunately, there's conflicting information here. On the one hand, it does make reasonable sense to suggest that there's a conflict with another plugin given that not everyone is affected (which I'm assuming is the case) and that the problem is actually with another plugin, and thus out of control of Yoast. Some people have indicated that disabling a particular plugin has resolved the problem.

However, it's not always the same plugin being disabled that fixes the problem and I don't have any of those plugins installed anyway. Since a lot of people are complaining at the same time, it seems just as reasonable to conclude there's an issue with the Yoast plugin itself.

Short of disabling each and every other plugin one by one, what other options are there to diagnose the problem to help narrow it down?

• Chris Morgan

[ImagineWD]

Ok, I just tested an old junk site I have by installing Yoast and activating it. It still did not show the snippet editor button. So I deactivated ALL of the other plugins, went to check on a page and lo and behold, there it was.

So I went back to the site I have that I was so concerned about (which has lots of plugins) and started deactivating the ones I thought we could do without (for a while). There was about 6 of them. Then I checked and the snippet editor was showing. Yay!

I went back to the plugins page and one by one reactivated them and checked the page each time to see if the editor had disappeared. Oddly, I got all 6 of them reactivated and the editor is still showing. Huh? Odd but hey, I'll take it and maybe that will work for you too. Fingers crossed, and let me know, I would be curious. Best, Joanna

[ImagineWD]

Well, so much for that! Today it is broken again and I tried deactivating the other plugins again but it will not go back to working. Sigh!

[Rarst]

Do you have any JS errors in browser console?

This does seem typical of a conflict with something, but it alternating between working and not with other plugins disabled sounds pretty strange.

[dbarlett]

I'm seeing this in 3.1.1 when the user doesn't have manage_options capability.

[ImagineWD]

Interestingly I just noticed that the snippet editor does not work for Posts but it is working in Pages. I do not know how to check to see if I have any 'JS errors in browser console'. And where would I check for the manage_options capability? Thanks!!

[dbarlett]

Chrome: right-click > Inspect Firefox: right-click > Inspect Element > Console tag

Once you have the console visible, refresh the page.

By default, Administrators have manage_options, Editors and below do not. If you're using a plugin like User Role Editor, check there.

[ImagineWD]

It does seem to show an error. It says: TypeError: n is undefined

I am admin and am not using any special Role plugin Any suggestions? And thanks!

[Rarst]

Could you please include error message in full? It's important which script file/line it is coming from.

[toshotosho]

I get it in Underscore.js after updating Yoast from 3.0.7 to 3.1.1.

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'replace' of undefined

The error points to

n.replace(u, function(t, r, e, u, o) {

The whole stack is

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'replace' of undefined j.template @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=hoverIntent,common,admin-bar,heartbeat,autosave,suggest,wp-ajax-respons…:51(anonymous function) @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=hoverIntent,common,admin-bar,heartbeat,autosave,suggest,wp-ajax-respons…:384(anonymous function) @ wp-seo-metabox-category.min.js:1m.extend.each @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2m.fn.m.each @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2a.fn.initYstSEOPrimaryCategory @ wp-seo-metabox-category.min.js:1(anonymous function) @ wp-seo-metabox-category.min.js:1j @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2k.fireWith @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2m.extend.ready @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2J @ load-scripts.php?c=1&load[]=jquery-core,jquery-migrate,utils,jquery-ui-core,plupload&ver=4.4.2:2 wp-tinymce.php?c=1&ver=4208-20151113:21 Deprecated TinyMCE API call: .onMouseUp.add(..)

HTH.

[toshotosho]

Found a plugin that has something to do with it:

Easing Slider Version 2.2.1.1

Once deactivated, problem disappears.

[Rarst]

Known conflict with Easing Slider, see #4105

[toshotosho]

Oh. Looking at their website, project seem to be abandoned. Anyway, thanks for the quick response!

[ImagineWD]

And that was the whole error message for me.

[Rarst]

@ImagineWD do you mean that you have exact same error message? With files it's coming from and everything?

Do you use plugin mentioned by chance?

[ImagineWD]

Sorry, no, my error just said: TypeError: n is undefined but I am trying to recreate that and can no longer get a message in the console section. Perhaps I am doing this wrong. I opened the WordPress admin area, went to a post, scrolled down to the Yoast SEO section. Right clicked on it > inspect element and went to the console tab, then refreshed the page. Did I do that right?

And no, I do not use that particular plugin. This morning I again turned off everyone of them I could but it still didn't help. I also turned off the site map part of Yoast in case it was conflicting with the other ones.

[curlingdan]

Just like everyone I just upgrade to Yoast 3.1.1 and I get no Snippet text, no content Analysis and if I add a Focus keyword nothing happens. I had no issues with the previous version. Everything was working fine before I upgraded.

How can I downgrade back to the previous version until there is a fix and if I do downgrade will I lose all my SEO on my previous blog post?

Why is Yoast not doing an emergency patch to fix this with so many people having the same issues?

This is what I have in my console. wp-tinymce.php?c=1&ver=4208-20151113:21 Deprecated TinyMCE API call: .onNodeChange.add(..)

[curlingdan]

I started to mess around other plugings by deactivating them and it seems that the once who is causing this problem right is NewStatPress. 1.1.8 When activated then Yoast not working. When I deactivate then its working. I notice on the plugin site that there is a new version 1.1.9. Will try that one and see if it resolves everything.

[curlingdan]

Just finished the upgrade to 1.1.9 plugin NewStatpress and everything is back to normal with Yoast.

[loganmarchione]

@ImagineWD, my screenshot looks the same as yours.

Here is the error I'm receiving in the console.

ReferenceError: YoastSEO is not defined             wp-seo-post-scraper-311.min.js:1:778
d()                      wp-seo-post-scraper-311.min.js:1
<anonymous>              wp-seo-post-scraper-311.min.js:1
m.Callbacks/j()          load-scripts.php:2
m.Callbacks/k.fireWith() load-scripts.php:2
.ready()                 load-scripts.php:2
J()                      load-scripts.php:2   

WordPress v4.4.2 Yoast SEO v3.1.1 No other plugins activated

[lebleut]

I had the same issue with another plugin and I fixed it :

I used the get_posts($tst_args); instead of the WP_Query class

please try the same solution and let ma know if it works :+1:

[loganmarchione]

I tested with two browsers. Was NOT working in Firefox, but was working in Chrome. Assuming it's an add-on causing this...

[ImagineWD]

It doesn't work in either browser for me and the only add-ons I have in Chrome are Norton and Skype.

[Rarst]

This thread is getting a little messy and I think people are piling up different issues here that look same (result in broken snippet editor).

@ImagineWD as thread author could you please provide exact error in full you are getting?

Anyone else — if you have a different error, or know what your issue is caused by conflict with something, please look up if there is thread for that or open a new issue.

[ImagineWD]

Hi Rarst, Well, it is not so much an error message as it is just that I do not have editing boxes for the title and description. I have noticed this is only happening in the Posts area, pages are fine, but his particular client does a lot of posts and works hard on her SEO so she is rather unhappy about it.

I have tried deactivating 95% of her other plugins and none of it helped. The last few that I cannot remove because they have content attached are: Ajax Event Calendar, Google Analyticator, Handsome Testimonials & Visual Form Builder. Do you know if any of those specific plugins may be the problem? Thanks! Joanna

[Rarst]

You did say you had error at one point above:

Sorry, no, my error just said: TypeError: n is undefined

Does it no longer occur?

[afercia]

As far as I know Handsome Testimonials is a known incompatible plugin, same as Easing Slider. See #4191

[ImagineWD]

Ah Ha. I will see if she is willing to change to a different testimonial plugin and see if that was it. Thank you for that!! If that works I will post it here. Best, Joanna

[atimmer]

This should be fixed in 3.2

[ImagineWD]

Yay! Yes the updated did it! All fixed and working perfectly. Thank you so much for this, I am sure it was not easy. Definitely one of the best plugins on the web!

[ammezie]

I experiencing this problem too

[Rarst]

@ammezie please open a new issue with details of your situation.