Contents
Overview
MetaGen (pkg_metagen, listed on the Joomla Extensions Directory as Automatic Meta Description) is a free SEO tune-up for Joomla. It fixes the problems that site audit tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush report on Joomla sites: missing and badly sized meta descriptions, over-long titles, heading problems, missing canonical and social share tags, broken images and broken outbound links.
Each problem appears on the MetaGen dashboard with a count of the affected articles and an action beside it. Most can be fixed in one click, and every change MetaGen makes to an article is recorded so you can review it.
MetaGen is completely free: no subscription, no key, no usage limits and no external services. Everything runs on your own server. It is released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3.0-or-later).
Meta descriptions on save
A meta description is written from the article title and intro text every time you save an article, at a length search engines display in full.
SEO tune-up
Fourteen checks modelled on the issues audit tools report, each with a live count and a fix, a report or a setting.
One-click fixes
Fill missing meta descriptions, bring long and short ones within limits, shorten long titles and demote extra H1s across the whole site.
Canonical and share tags
Canonical links, Open Graph tags and X (Twitter) cards on every article page, all naming the same host.
Site scan
Checks each article page as visitors see it for an H1, and every image and outbound link for errors, on demand or in the background.
Every change logged
Title, meta description and heading changes are listed with the original title kept, so any change can be reviewed and put back by hand.
The SEO tune-up
The SEO tune-up list on the dashboard is the heart of MetaGen. Each row names an issue, shows how many articles it affects (or a tick when there are none), and offers an action: Fix opens a pane that makes the change, View lists the affected articles, Open starts a tool, and Settings goes to the switch that controls a tag.
Fixes change articles through Joomla’s own article model, so versions, finder indexing and other plugins behave exactly as they do when you edit by hand. Article URLs are never changed.
Meta descriptions and titles
| Check | What MetaGen does |
|---|---|
| Meta description missing | Generates a description for every article that has none, from the title and intro text. Descriptions you have written are left alone. |
| Meta description too long | Regenerates descriptions over the maximum length (160 characters by default) to a length that fits, trailing ellipsis included, so strict 160-character checks pass. |
| Meta description too short | Regenerates descriptions under 70 characters from the article content, and only replaces one when the new description is longer. |
| Title too long | Shortens titles over 60 characters at a word boundary. This is a separate, explicit choice because it changes the headline; the URL is kept and the original title is recorded. |
Headings
| Check | What MetaGen does |
|---|---|
| Multiple H1 tags | Finds articles whose body has more than one H1 and demotes the extras to H2, keeping the first. |
| Heading structure | A tool that changes one heading level to another across articles, for example promoting an orphaned H3 to H2, optionally within one category. The pane shows a live count of the articles it will change. |
| H1 missing | Found by the site scan, which checks the page as visitors see it. The template usually prints the article title as the H1, so the article body alone can’t answer this. |
Canonical and share tags
The MetaGen content plugin adds these tags to article pages as they are displayed. Nothing is stored in your articles, and each can be switched off in the plugin settings. If a page already has a canonical link, MetaGen leaves it in place.
| Check | What MetaGen does |
|---|---|
| Duplicate pages without canonical | Adds a canonical link pointing at the article’s SEF URL, so the same article reached through non-SEF links, other menu paths or ?start= isn’t treated as several duplicate pages. It works alongside Joomla’s Redirect plugin: canonicals cover live duplicate URLs, redirects cover moved or missing ones. |
| Open Graph tags | Adds og: tags so a shared article gets a title, description and image. og:url always equals the canonical URL, which clears the audit warning “Open Graph URL not matching canonical”. |
| X (Twitter) card | Adds X card tags for a rich preview when an article is shared on X. |
| Canonical host agreement | Shows which host your pages name (for example with or without www.) and warns when the System – SEF plugin’s Domain field and the site URL disagree, or when neither is set. Settings opens the SEF plugin so you can set the address you want indexed. |
Images and links
| Check | What MetaGen does |
|---|---|
| Missing image alt text | Lists the articles with images that have no alt text, with a link to edit each. Good alt text describes the image, so MetaGen leaves the writing to you. |
| Broken images | Found by the site scan: images in articles that fail to load, with the articles that use each one. |
| External links 4XX | Found by the site scan: outbound links that return a 4XX error such as 404 Not Found, with the articles that contain each one. |
Site scan
Some problems can only be found by requesting a URL: whether an article page reaches the visitor with an H1, whether an image loads, whether an outbound link still works. The site scan does this for every published, public article:
- Pages: each article page is fetched as a visitor sees it and checked for an H1.
- Images: every image the articles use, in the body and as intro or full-text images. Images on your own site are checked on disk, without a web request.
- Outbound links: every link to another site, in the body and in the article’s Links A, B and C.
Results appear in the Site scan pane: each broken image and each outbound link returning a 4XX error, with the articles that use it and a link to edit them. The three tune-up rows (H1 missing, Broken images, External links 4XX) show the counts from the latest scan, and say Not scanned until the first one.
Running a scan
- On demand: press Scan site in the dashboard toolbar. The Site scan pane opens and a progress bar shows pages and links checked, straight from the server. The scan works through the site in short slices, so it never runs into your server’s time limit, and the page reloads onto the results when it finishes. If you leave the dashboard mid-scan, it carries on the next time you open it.
- In the background: the package installs a scheduled task, MetaGen – site scan, switched off. Turn it on under System > Scheduled Tasks. It runs every 15 minutes, continues any scan in progress, and starts a new scan when the last one is older than the rescan interval (7 days by default). Pressing Run on the task starts a new scan straight away.
Reading the results
- Pages that can’t be fetched (for example a page your own site answers with a 404) are listed, never counted as having an H1. The H1 row then shows how many pages went unchecked instead of a tick.
- Links answering 429 Too Many Requests are rate-limiting the scan, not broken. They are listed as not checked and never counted as problems.
- Links answering 401, 403 or 429 carry a note that the site may refuse automated checks. Open the link to confirm before you edit the article.
- The scan counts as one view of each article, the same as any visitor.
The dashboard
Open Components > MetaGen. Four headline cards sit at the top:
| Card | Shows |
|---|---|
| SEO issues | Open issues across all the tune-up checks, and how many checks they fall under. Green when there is nothing to fix. |
| Meta descriptions | The share of articles that have a meta description, with a progress bar. |
| Improved this month | Articles MetaGen has fixed or regenerated since the start of the month, each counted once. |
| Site scan | When the last scan finished and how many broken images or links it found, with a link to the results. |
Below the SEO tune-up list, the Analytics section shows where to start:
- Priority issues — your ten most-visited published articles that have an issue, one line each: badges naming the issues (for example Meta too short, Broken link, No H1), the title, its hits and an Edit article button. Fixing these first helps the pages most people see.
- Issues by category — categories ranked by how many of their published articles have issues, shown as “13 of 33” with a bar and the total number of issues. Each category opens its article list, so you can hand a section to whoever looks after it.
- Articles changed — every title, meta description and heading change MetaGen has made, with the original title kept beside the new one.
- Regeneration errors — any article a bulk regeneration couldn’t update, with the reason and a link to open it (shown only when there are some).
Priority issues and Issues by category use the same rules as the SEO tune-up, plus the latest site scan for H1s, broken images and broken links. Site-wide checks such as canonical host agreement aren’t tied to one article, so they don’t appear in these lists.
Installation
Step 1: Install the package
- Download the latest
pkg_metagenpackage from the Multizone extensions directory - Log into your Joomla Administrator
- Navigate to System > Install > Extensions
- Upload the
pkg_metagen_vx.x.x.zipfile
Step 2: Check what was installed
The package installs three extensions. The two plugins are enabled for you.
- MetaGen component — the dashboard, SEO tune-up and site scan
- Content – MetaGen — writes meta descriptions on save and adds the canonical, Open Graph and X card tags
- Task – MetaGen — provides the background site scan task (the task itself starts switched off)
Updates arrive through Joomla’s own update system under System > Update > Extensions.
Getting started
Open the dashboard
Go to Components > MetaGen. The headline cards and the SEO tune-up list show where your site stands.
Fix the counts
Work down the tune-up list. Start with Meta description missing, then the length checks and Multiple H1 tags. Each Fix pane explains what will change and asks you to confirm.
Check the canonical host
Look at Canonical host agreement. If it warns, set the System – SEF plugin’s Domain field to the address you want search engines to index.
Scan the site
Press Scan site for H1s, broken images and broken outbound links. Turn on the MetaGen – site scan scheduled task to keep the results fresh.
Configuration
Content plugin
Under System > Plugins, search for “MetaGen” and open Content – MetaGen, or use the Plugin settings link under the SEO tune-up list.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Length | 160 characters | Longest meta description MetaGen writes. Text is cut at a word boundary. |
| Separator | - |
Joins the title and the content summary when both are included. |
| Overwrite Existing | No | Replace meta descriptions that already exist when an article is saved. Leave off to keep descriptions you have written. |
| Include Title | Yes | Start the meta description with the article title. |
| Include Content | Yes | Include text from the article’s intro. |
| Open Graph tags | Yes | Add og: tags to article pages. |
| X (Twitter) card tags | Yes | Add X card tags to article pages. |
| Canonical link | Yes | Add a canonical link to article pages when none is present. |
| Debug Mode | No | Show a message when a meta description is generated on save. |
Site scan task
Under System > Scheduled Tasks, open MetaGen – site scan.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Rescan every (days) | 7 | Start a new scan when the last finished scan is older than this. |
| Seconds per run | 20 | How long each run spends checking before it stops until the next run. Keep it below your server’s PHP time limit. |
Component options
Under Components > MetaGen > Options:
- Data Retention Period (days) (default: 365) — how long regeneration history is kept. Article statistics are kept indefinitely.
Troubleshooting
Check the Canonical host agreement row. When the SEF plugin’s Domain field and the site URL name different hosts (for example one with www. and one without), set the Domain field to the address you want indexed. Re-crawl after the change; audit tools report what they saw on their last crawl.
If your page source shows the tags as name="og:…" rather than property="og:…", a Joomla core file is out of date. Reinstall the core files from System > Update > Joomla.
MetaGen uses the standard Joomla update system. Check for updates via System > Update > Extensions.
If updates are not appearing, verify your server can reach the Multizone update server. If the update site is missing, reinstall the package to restore it.
Get support
Contact us
Questions, bug reports, feature requests — get in touch.
- Website: multizone.co.uk
- Email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - In-app help: Each Multizone component has a setup checklist on its dashboard and contextual descriptions on every form field.
What support covers
All Multizone extensions are freely downloadable as trials.
- Trial — community support via the documentation and changelog.
- Standard / Premium / Enterprise — direct email support; response priority and depth scale with tier.
