Learning to Build Websites

Comment on WordPress SEO Plugins by SEO Dave.

I don’t see anything seriously wrong, you need to be more specific as I assume you didn’t stop working on your site after making the comment and could have fixed issues by the time I looked.

I see things you’ve done that you shouldn’t suggesting you’ve been turning Stallion features on without understanding how they work. Same with W3 Total Cache Plugin settings as well.

Takes time to learn how to build a website that looks good and takes SEO and performance into account. There’s a lotto learn with a steep learning curve to get the most out of WordPress especially with a package as versatile as Stallion.

Until you understand what you are doing it’s best to run with the SEO defaults with minor changes rather than what looks like randomly changing options.

Under “Stallion Theme” >> “Child Theme Options”

You’ve turned on the example layout and the example colour scheme?

Unless you’ve gone to the trouble of editing the relevant CSS files for those examples it doesn’t make any sense using them, they are just copied of other layouts/colours. Suggests randomly setting features without understanding them.

I guess you didn’t read this on the child theme options page:

Below you will find options that generally override main Stallion Responsive Options. If you set “Stallion Theme Colour Scheme” under “Stallion >> Colour Options” to “White n Blue” and “Stallion Theme Colour Scheme” below to “Example Child Colour”, this site will show the “Example Child Colour” colour scheme (Example Colour is a copy of Default Basic). Almost all the options below can also be overwrote on a post by post basis (by editing a post or page) allowing you to use both original Stallion Responsive options and child theme options on the same site.

Example Options have been left available for webmasters to modify for an easier way to add custom layouts, colour schemes, image sets etc… without the need for editing the Stallion Responsive Child Theme file (st_responsive_child.php : the file that holds all the options below). IE the “Example Header Set” images are located under “/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/headers/example-st/” you could replace them with your custom images if you don’t feel comfortable editing the st_responsive_child.php file directly). The example image sets and example layout/colour CSS files are copied from the main Stallion Responsive Theme folder so are not new colours etc…

Note the part bolded, Example Colour is a copy of Default Basic. By setting the example colour scheme you’ve set the Default Basic colour scheme which as the name suggests is basic (not really meant for use, it’s a starting point for making new colour schemes).

Turn them back to “Use Original Options” and use the original options for those two setting under

“Stallion Theme” >> “Layout Options” : “Sidebar Layout”

That sets your layout.

“Stallion Theme” >> “Colour Options” : “Stallion Theme Colour Scheme”.

That sets your colour scheme.

Under “Stallion Theme” >> “Colour Options” you’ve turned the “Featured Posts Slideshow” on, but appears you haven’t set any featured posts. that’s why under the header area you seethe left and right arrows, but no featured posts. That feature requires multiple JS files which have a performance hit. If you don’t set featured posts you are loading JS files for no reason!

If you want featured posts (I don’t use the feature due to the SEO performance hit) you have to edit say 5 posts and give them a Stallion Featured Thumbnail so there’s something for the feature to use and tick the “Use in Featured Slideshow” box.

If you have been randomly changing options without understanding what you are doing I’d suggest running the stallion_defaults_seo.php option on the main “Stallion Theme” options page and start again.

With W3 total Cache looks like you’ve not used the options I suggested since CSS and JS files aren’t minified and combined into one CSS file. There shouldn’t be any issues with minifying and combining the CSS files, depending on the JS files you use some JS minfify options are not suitable: it’s a try and see what works for you I’m afraid.

Note you are using Vibe SEO Pack, not reviewed the Vibe SEO Pack Plugin, looks like it can cause SEO damage the screenshots on the WordPress plugin page shows noindex and nofollow options, I’d turn that plugin off. It’s adding an additional CSS file to your site which based on the rules within looks like it’s only meant to load when you are logged into admin: basically I shouldn’t see this CSS file when I view source, so looks like the developer messed up their code.

BTW you’ve got code errors in your custom widget, for example added body tags (the opening and closing body tag shouldn’t be there). edit the widget and remove the body and /body bits with the surrounding signs >.

If you use Firefox browser. “Right click” your home page followed by “View Page Source”. Pay attention to blocks of red text (not all red text is bad), tends to be broken HTML code like having a set of body tags in your widget code (they are highlighted red) and two broken image codes.

First one is no space before src, this (Shipping”src=”) should be (Shipping” src=”) missed a space. And the second is (1/?quot; title=”) should be (1/?” title=”).

David