[Resolved] Google Webmaster Tools Errors = Missing: author Missing: updated

[Todd]

Hi Tom, Just noticed in Google Webmaster Tools, a couple of static pages are showing Errors = Missing: author Missing: updated.

Does this have any negative effect on the site’s performance, or does it need to be corrected? If so, how would I go about doing that?

Thanks!!!

[Tom]

Hi Todd,

It doesn’t have any negative effect on performance.

Typically, static pages don’t have author or updated/published tags – these tags are usually reserved for posts etc..

I need to look in to what Google thinks about adding these to pages but having them hidden (no one wants an author name or date on their static pages).

[Olga]

Hi, Tom!
I have such errors on every page.
Maybe because I hid this elements in theme customizer? http://joxi.ru/Dr83RQvuLbY4A6.png

Can I turn hEntry off like in this article? https://kb.yoast.com/kb/fixing-hcard-author-error/ If yes, where is better to place the code?

[Tom]

Those “errors” won’t hurt your website, but it is because those elements aren’t present.

You can remove the .hentry class with this function:

function tu_remove_hentry( $class ) {
	$class = array_diff( $class, array( 'hentry' ) );	
	return $class;
}
add_filter( 'post_class', 'tu_remove_hentry' );

[Olga]

Thank you, Tom! I put this code to Simple PHP plugin. I hope it’s right place to it)

[Tom]

That’s perfect 🙂

[John]

Tom,

Is it possible to remove the hatom @ type for tags or hatom altogether?

I placed the code into my functions.php and it did not work.

function tu_remove_hentry( $class ) {
	$class = array_diff( $class, array( 'hentry' ) );	
	return $class;
}
add_filter( 'post_class', 'tu_remove_hentry' );

[Tom]

Not really sure what you mean?

That code will remove the hentry class from your post elements.

[John]

Thanks for the reply Tom. After a few hours I finally got it cleared up. I am very amateur at coding and rely heavily on other examples.

For this project/website I am testing differences between a site that has full markups (schema etc..) and one without. I am not using it as a blog.

From my understanding, the hentry and hatom markups are something wordpress injects to signify that the content is syndicatable (if that’s a word?)

I was able to manually remove all references of hentry/hatom markups by modifying files in my child theme removing markups such as:

entry-header
entry-meta
entry-summary
entry-content
etc

Additionally, I removed all link tags such as:

rel=”home”
rel=”bookmark”
etc

Further, I added code to my functions.php to remove the rel=”category” and rel=”tag” markups.

Thanks,

JB

[Tom]

Glad you got it all working.

Not sure if editing those classes are necessary, although maybe schema.org targets them.

[Thomas]

Is there a way to fix this so that the author structured data will work for posts, and disable for tags, categories, and static pages?

Also, with the code snippet mentioned above, I am not clear on where that code is supposed to be placed.

Thanks,
Tom

[Tom]

So you want to remove the author completely from everywhere except for single posts?

The PHP can be added using these instructions: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/adding-php/

[Thomas]

Thanks for the instructions.

Yes, I would like to keep the author attribute for posts and remove it from other areas of the site in order to clean up the Google Search Console issue.

[Tom]

Try this:

add_filter( 'generate_post_author_output', 'tu_post_author_single_only' );
function tu_post_author_single_only( $output ) {
    if ( is_single() ) {
        return $output;
    }

    return false;
}

[Author]

Posts