pkg_metagen changelog
Notable releases and milestones for MetaGen (pkg_metagen).
| Version | Summary |
|---|---|
| 3.7.14 (production) | Category pages: only the ones visitors can reach. Category pages without one H1 now checks only categories a menu leads to — a menu item shows the category or one of its parents. A category with no menu item can still be given an address under another menu item, such as Home, and its page there was reported even though nothing links to it. |
| 3.7.13 (production) | Two more things audits report, now in the site scan. Category pages without one H1: the scan also fetches each category page a menu reaches (blog and list pages) and lists those with no H1 or more than one, with a link to edit the category. Links to redirects: the scan notes where every link in your articles ends up, and lists the ones that only work through a redirect — often left behind when pages move — with the address to link to instead. Why this matters: each SEO tune-up row links to a page on multizone.co.uk explaining the warning, why Joomla sites get it and how to fix it. Rate MetaGen: once MetaGen has improved five articles, the dashboard asks once for a review on the Joomla Extensions Directory; Maybe later hides it for 60 days and Don’t ask again for good. |
| 3.7.11 – 3.7.12 (production) | Tidier shortened page titles. When Title too long shortens a page title, it no longer leaves it ending on a word such as “for”, “of”, “and” or “the”. A clear message when your session has expired. Pressing Scan now after your admin session has timed out now says so and offers a link to reload the page, instead of showing “Unexpected token <”. |
| 3.7.10 (production) | Shorter page titles without touching your headlines. Title too long now measures the page title search engines see — the article’s Browser Page Title if it has one, otherwise its headline, plus your site name — and the fix fills in a shorter Browser Page Title (the article’s Options tab) instead of cutting the headline. More multiple-H1 cases. An H1 inside an article whose template already shows the title as the H1 now counts, and the fix turns every H1 in that article’s text into H2. Large images. The site scan records each image’s size, and a new Large images row lists images of 500 KB or more with the articles that use them, ready to resize or compress. |
| 3.7.9 (production) | The site scan stays off your server’s own network. Links and images in articles are checked by the site scan; any that point to a local, private or cloud-metadata address are now listed as not checked instead of being requested, and every redirect is checked too. This follows the class of issue fixed in Joomla 6.1.4 and 5.4.9. |
| 3.7.8 (production) | Closer to what a full site audit reports. A new Default share image setting in the content plugin gives every article without an image of its own an Open Graph and X card image, so audits stop reporting “Open Graph tags incomplete”; the Open Graph row reminds you until it’s set. The intro image is now also used when an article has no full-text image. Title too long now counts the site name Joomla adds to page titles, so with “- Your Site” appended the limit and the fix match the page title audit tools measure. The site scan also checks links to your own pages, and a new Broken internal links row lists any that return an error such as 404. Canonical host agreement now warns when your site also answers on the other host (with or without www.) instead of redirecting, which makes search engines crawl every page twice. |
| 3.7.6 – 3.7.7 (production) | Analytics that tell you what to fix first. The Analytics section now opens with Priority issues: your ten most-visited published articles that have any SEO tune-up issue, one line each, with badges naming the issues and a link to edit the article. Beside it, Issues by category ranks categories by how many of their published articles have issues and links to each category’s articles. Both follow the tune-up’s own rules and the latest site scan. They replace the regeneration history and most-regenerated lists, which only covered meta description generation. The Articles changed list and regeneration errors are unchanged. |
| 3.7.5 (production) | Panes open clear of the toolbar. When a dashboard pane opens, such as Site scan from the Scan site button, its heading now stops just below the admin toolbar instead of sliding underneath it. |
| 3.7.4 (production) | Easier site scans, and no false alarms from rate limiting. A new Scan site button in the dashboard toolbar opens the Site scan pane and starts a scan, and the Site scan card links to the latest results. A link whose server answers 429 Too Many Requests is refusing the scan, and not broken, so it no longer counts as a broken image or an external 4XX link; the pane lists such links separately as not checked. Running the MetaGen – site scan task by hand from System → Scheduled Tasks now starts a fresh scan. Scheduled runs still wait for the rescan interval, and their log says when the next scan is due. |
| 3.7.0 – 3.7.3 (production) | Site scan: missing H1s, broken images and broken outbound links. The three “Soon” rows in the SEO tune-up panel now work. A new site scan fetches each published article page as a visitor sees it and checks it has an H1 (usually the title, printed by the template), and checks every image and outbound link the articles use. The Site scan pane lists each broken image and each outbound link returning a 4XX error, with the articles that use it and a link to edit them; pages that can’t be fetched are listed rather than counted as fine. Run it with Scan now on the dashboard, or in the background with the new MetaGen – site scan scheduled task, which is installed switched off; turn it on under System → Scheduled Tasks to rescan weekly. A clearer dashboard: four headline cards (open SEO issues, meta description coverage, articles improved this month, last site scan) replace the settings and statistics blocks, and the settings are summarised in one line with a link to the plugin. |
| 3.6.3 – 3.6.4 (production) | Canonical and Open Graph URLs now always name the same host. Joomla takes the canonical host from the System – SEF plugin’s Domain field when it is set, while other absolute URLs follow the site URL. On a site where one includes www. and the other doesn’t, article pages could carry a canonical on one host and an og:url (and share image) on the other which is reported by SEO tools as “Open Graph URL not matching canonical”. MetaGen now reads the SEF plugin’s Domain first and falls back to the site URL, so its tags always agree with the canonical Joomla writes. A new Canonical host agreement check in the SEO tune-up panel shows which host your pages name, flags it when the two settings disagree or when neither is set, and opens the SEF plugin so you can set the address you want your site to be indexed. |
| 3.6.2 (production) | Open Graph URL now matches the canonical. The og:url tag MetaGen adds to article pages now uses the article’s canonical URL, so social shares point at the same address search engines treat as canonical. Previously og:url was built from the address the visitor actually arrived on, which could differ from the canonical by host (for example www. vs no www.) — the mismatch an audit tool like Ahrefs reports as “Open Graph URL not matching canonical”. The canonical link itself is now built from the site’s configured address too, so both tags agree however the page was reached. |
| 3.6.0 – 3.6.1 (production) | Fix duplicate pages with canonical links. MetaGen now adds a canonical link tag to article pages, pointing at the article’s SEF URL — so the same article reached through different URLs (non-SEF, other menu paths, ?start=) isn’t treated as several duplicate pages by search engines. That’s one of the most common Joomla SEO warnings, and it’s fixed the Joomla-native way. It works alongside the Redirect plugin (this covers live duplicate URLs; redirects cover moved or missing ones) and is skipped if a canonical is already present. The new check joins the SEO tune-up panel, which is now laid out as a clean, responsive table. |
| 3.3.0 – 3.5.1 (production) | MetaGen becomes an SEO tune-up. A new SEO tune-up panel on the dashboard lists common SEO issues (the kind an audit tool like Ahrefs reports) with a live count of how many articles are affected and a one-click action for each. This release adds several: Swap heading level across articles (for example promote an orphaned H3 to H2, optionally within one category); Multiple H1 — demote the extra H1s in an article to H2, keeping the first; Meta description too short — regenerate short descriptions longer from the article’s content; and Missing image alt text — list the articles whose images need alt text so you can fill them in. It also adds Open Graph and X (Twitter) card tags on article pages (switchable in the content plugin), so social shares get a proper preview card. Every content change is recorded in the Articles changed list. More checks (broken links and images) are on the way. |
| 3.2.0 – 3.2.1 (production) | Fix over-length meta descriptions and titles in bulk. A new Fix over-length button on the dashboard finds and fixes only the articles that break the SEO length limits — meta descriptions over 160 characters and titles over 60 — leaving everything already within the limits untouched. Meta descriptions are shortened to a compliant length (the trailing ellipsis is now counted too, so they no longer tip over a strict 160-character check). Titles can optionally be shortened as well: this is an explicit, separate choice because it changes the headline, but the article’s URL is preserved and every change is recorded. An Articles changed list in the Analytics section shows exactly what each run altered — title and/or meta — with the original title kept alongside the new one so a title change can be reviewed and put back by hand. |
| 3.1.19 | Progress feedback when regenerating in bulk. Pressing Regenerate Meta Descriptions now shows an immediate “working” indicator — a spinner and an animated progress bar — and disables the button so you know the run has started and can’t accidentally start it twice. This is especially helpful on large sites where the run takes a moment to complete. |
| 3.1.17 – 3.1.18 | Bulk regeneration reliability & error reporting. Regenerating meta descriptions for all articles at once no longer stops with an error part-way through, and one problem article can no longer abort the whole run. Any articles that do fail are now listed in a new Regeneration errors table in the dashboard Analytics section — each with a link to open the article and the reason it failed — so you can go straight to the ones that need attention. |
| 3.1.11 – 3.1.13 | A weekly featured card in the admin dashboard. The “More from Multizone” panel now shows a weekly featured card, with a link to leave a review on the Joomla Extensions Directory. No other changes. |
| 3.1.8 – 3.1.10 | Bulk meta-description regenerate now routes through the Joomla article model. Now goes through com_content’s Article model: $model->save(['id' => ..., 'metadesc' => ...]) per row, fires the event, UCM refreshes, search sees the new text. |
| 3.1.7 | Coordinated production release alongside the rest of the suite. No MetaGen-specific changes — version bumped for synchrony so that all Multizone extensions are in step. |
| 3.1.0 | All five extensions updated to 3.1 — coordinated production release. |
| 3.0.26 | Dashboard tile regex fix in the shared “Multizone Extensions” admin home panel — aligns with the same fix shipped across the suite. |
| 3.0.25 | Author email updated across all manifests |
| 3.0.22 | Release number aligned across Multizone extension suite as part of unified DevOps pipeline |
| 1.0.4–3.0.21 | Release numbers aligned across Multizone extension suite as part of unified DevOps pipeline |
| 1.0.3 | Cross-promotion panel linking to Multizone extensions directory |
| 1.0.1–1.0.2 | Release numbers aligned across Multizone extension suite as part of unified DevOps pipeline |
| 1.0.0 | Initial release — automatic meta description generation on article save, admin dashboard with coverage statistics, bulk regeneration with empty-only filtering, and analytics |
