Fix Problems & Issues of Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

For a running site, we need to fix current problems rather than instantly deciding to change overnight. This Article Essentially is To Guide You to Fix Problems & Issues of Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin. You need plan to change towards a sane plugin as unforeseen troubles is expected from anything where Joost de Valk is related.

If you are running Nginx web server, you are unlikely to understand errors. If you are running Apache2 web server with HTTP/2, HSTS; you’ll face lot of unrelated troubles. That happens because not all posts are created to make HTML by cache plugins like W3TC. Usually the plugin sucks huge RAM as PHP process.

Fix Problems & Issues of Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin

Take full backup – both of MySQL and FTP. Work with the backup version (that will serve the purpose of testing whether backup works like real one).

Deactivate all plugins developed by Joost de Valk except Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin. Go to FTP or SSH to server (better), if you are using Apache2, change permission of .htaccess file only to make it readable by anyone except www-data, root and your preferred user. Check permissions of wp-admin, wp-includes directory to WordPress recommended. Empty error.log file. Then deactivate Yoast SEO. Reboot the server.

Now, activate Yoast SEO. Try to do what were creating troubles. Watch error.log file. It is likely that you will not have the previous trouble.

Now, install SEO Data Transporter WP Plugin. Transfer SEO data from Yoast SEO to what sane free SEO plugin you want to use, like All in One SEO. Temporarily install the sane free SEO plugin you want to use, like All in One SEO, deactivate Yoast SEO and transfer the SEO data. Check whether everything is fine.

The above steps will make sure that your setup including WordPress, Server is fine. You can go back and use Yoast SEO if you want.

Optional : SSH to server, go to wp-content/plugins and run rm -rf to delete Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin directory forever.

Why the Plugin is Incompatible in Free Software World?

In last 2 decades, Joost de Valk banned from some forums on internet run/used to run by gentlemen. He loves to sell his super-priced stuffs, promote his clients etc.

Free Software world does not tolerate spamming. Of course anyone can sell service or piece of code in acceptable manner not amounting to spammy.

If Matt Mullenweg ran Joost de Valk like marketing of services of his companies, WordPress would be unusable exactly like thousands of Ad bloated Android App exists. Every plugin developer does need money, many has premium version. But there is limit of sane promotion of “premium” features. If GNU/Linux developers ran Ads to promote own selves, none could use the software like GNU sed, curl, wget, also Linux kernel.

Remember : We need only basic features with a plugin or theme to add meta description, optimize title, add sitemap. That is not a rocket science and it is practical to avoid his “Freemium” Plugin & use old trusted All in One SEO or Platinum SEO.

There were plugins before Yoast to analyze texts, meta description, keywords which uses more intense tests than only using Flesch Reading Ease. Not everyone needs all features. If one plugin convenient do all works, someone would create one plugin for caching, statistics, SEO part.