Nodewords: The Drupal 6 Meta Tags module
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This module allows you to set some meta tags for the different content
available on your site, including nodes, users, views, taxonomy filters and
error pages.
Giving more attention to the important keywords and/or description on your site
may help you to get better positioning within public search engines.
This version of the module only works with Drupal 6.x.
Features
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The primary features include:
* The current supported basic meta tags are ABSTRACT, CANONICAL, GEO.POSITION,
DESCRIPTION, ICBM, KEYWORDS, REVISIT-AFTER, RIGHTS, ROBOTS, in addition
to the TITLE tag.
* The Dublin Core meta tag schema may be added by enabling the "Nodewords
extra meta tags" module.
* The Open Graph Protocol meta tags, as used by Facebook, may be added by
enabling the "Open Graph meta tags" module (see below).
* A pluggable system allow the inclusion of new meta tags in addition to the
ones provided by this module.
* Meta tags can be assigned site-wide defaults and then overridden on a
per-node, per-tag and per-path basis.
* It is possible to control which of the available tags will be available for
editing versus only using the previously configured values.
* All text of the DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS meta tags are added to the search
system so they are searchable too; other meta tags could be added to the
search system too (depending on the code implemented from the module).
Integration with other modules
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Nodewords integrates with other modules for automatic selection of meta tags.
* On node pages all terms of specified vocabularies associated can be added to
the KEYWORDS meta tag.
* On node pages the DESCRIPTION meta tag can be automatically generated from
the node's teaser or body text.
* On taxonomy pages, the term description is used as the meta tag DESCRIPTION.
The term itself is added to the list of KEYWORDS. You can override the
description to use, if you wish.
* Previous versions of this module provided support for Views and Panels. This
feature has been removed from Nodewords 6.x-1.x (since August 15, 2009) as
the module now provides an API allowing other modules to integrate with it.
* This module may also integrate with Tagadelic, CCK, and others.
* The Meta tags Node Type module [1] allows defaults to be assigned to each
content type, which can then be overridden on individual nodes.
* The Domain Meta module [2] provides integration with the Domain Access
module [3].
Installing Nodewords (first time installation)
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1. Backup your database.
2. Copy the module as normal.
More information about installing contributed modules could be found at
"Install contributed modules" [4].
3. Enable the "Nodewords" module from the module administration page
(Administer >> Site configuration >> Modules).
4. Enable other modules which provide meta tags. The following are included:
- Nodewords basic meta tags: for "abstract", "canonical", "description",
"keywords", "logo", "original-source", "revisit-after", "rights",
"robots", and "standout" meta tags, and the "title" HTML tag.
- Nodewords extra meta tags: for Dublin Core, "geo.placename",
"geo.position", "geo.region", "icbm" and "shorturl" meta tags.
- Nodewords Open Graph meta tags: for the Open Graph Protocol meta tags,
used for integration with Facebook's API.
5. Configure the module (see "Configuration" below).
Updating Nodewords (module version upgrade)
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1. Verify that the version you are going to upgrade contains all the features
your are using in your Drupal setup. Some features could have been removed
or replaced by others.
2. Backup your database.
3. Update current module code with latest recommended version. Previous
versions could have bugs already reported and fixed in the last version.
4. Complete the update process: set the site into maintenance mode, visit the
update.php script and finish the update operation. For more information
please see: http://groups.drupal.org/node/19513
5. Verify your module configuration and check that the features you are using
work as expected. Also verify that all required modules are enabled, and
permissions are set as desired.
Note: Whenever you have the chance, try an update in a local or development
copy of your site.
Configuration
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1. On the access control administration page ("Administer >> User management
>> Access control") you need to assign:
- The "administer meta tags" permission to the roles that are allowed to
administer the meta tags (such as setting the default values and/or
enabling the possibility to edit them),
- The "edit XYZ tag" permission to the roles that are allowed to set and
edit meta tags for the content (there is a permission for each of the
meta tags currently defined).
All users will be able to see the assigned meta tags.
2. On the settings page ("Administer >> Content management >> Meta tags") you
can specify the default settings for the module. To access this page users
need the "administer meta tags" permission.
3. Enable specific meta tags for editing before they are available for use by
users who do not have the "administer meta tags" permission.
4. The front page is an important page for each website, therefore you can
specifically set the meta tags to use on the front page meta tags settings
page ("Administer >> Content management >> Meta tags >> Default and
specific meta tags >> Front page"). Users need the "administer meta tags"
permission to do this. When there are resources providing meta tags
promoted in the front page, you may force the usage of "Front page" meta
tags superseding all of them.
Alternatively, you can opt not to set the meta tags for the front page on
this page, but to use the meta tags of the node, term or other page the
used to control the front page. To do this, uncheck the "Use front page
meta tags" option on the main settings page.
Note that, in contrast to previous versions of this module, the site
mission and/or site slogan are no longer used as DESCRIPTION or ABSTRACT
on the front page!
5. Each content type should be configured to control whether certain meta tags
should be automatically generated, e.g. the "description" tag can be
automatically taken from the node teaser.
Open Graph Protocol Extra Steps
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Because of a limitation in Drupal 6, if the Open Graph meta tags module is
enabled the site's theme will have to be customized. In order to work
correctly, and pass XHTML validation, the page.tpl.php for any theme(s) in use
must to be customized to add the following attribute to the HTML tag:
prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"
As an example, to make it work with the Garland theme the HTML tag must be
changed to the following:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="<?php print $language->language ?>" lang="<?php print $language->language ?>" dir="<?php print $language->dir ?>" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">
Unless this change is made the page output will fail XHTML validation and the
Open Graph meta tags may not be properly identified by Facebook.
Using With non-PHPTemplate Themes (Chameleon, Marvin)
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Because Nodewords depends upon PHPTemplate hooks in order to output the meta
tags it will not work with themes that do not use that template engine, e.g.
the core Chameleon or Marvin themes. In order for these to work a Nodewords
function must be called so it can insert the necessary tags into Drupal's
internal list of head tags. To insert the tags, edit the main theme file, e.g.
chameleon.theme, and insert the following at the top of the hook_page()
implementation, e.g. chameleon_page:
function chameleon_page($content, $show_blocks = TRUE, $show_messages = TRUE) {
/**
* Start Nodewords Changes.
*/
// Allow Nodewords to add its tags to the internal HTML head tags array.
if (module_exists('nodewords')) {
$vars = array();
nodewords_preprocess_page($vars);
}
/**
* End Nodewords Changes.
*/
Once that is added the tags will be inserted into the HTML output as expected.
Known Issues
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* Meta tags cannot be output with non-PHPTemplate themes like Chameleon or
Marvin without customization (see above).
* Use of the Open Graph meta tags sub-module requires customizing the
page.tpl.php file for the site's theme(s) (see above for details).
* Versions 6.x-1.9, 6.x-1.10 and 6.x-1.11 had a severe bug that could cause
data loss when updating from 6.x-1.8 or older. The problem was in how
nodewords_update_6162() changed the format of the 'id' field, causing records
with an 'id' (nid, tid, uid) over 65,536 to be lost. The bug has been fixed
in this release but any data lost as a result of this bug is irretrievable.
The maintainers are terribly sorry about this and humbly apologize if your
site(s) suffered data loss as a result of this and vow to do our utmost to
ensure errors of this magnitude never happen again.
* Many of the code & API changes from the 6.x-1.12-x development cycle have
been reverted; modules that integrate with the Nodewords APIs will have to
be updated accordingly.
* Nodewords currently does not support tokens, that functionality was lost
when the 6.x-1.12-x codebase was reverted. Adding Token support is planned
for a future release: http://drupal.org/node/1380362
* If ThemeKey stops changing the theme after Nodewords is enabled, the problem
is with another module and can be resolved by adjusting the ThemeKey module's
weight in the 'system' table. See https://drupal.org/node/754970 for more
details.
Related modules
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Some modules are available that extend Nodewords with additional functionality:
* Domain Meta Tags, by Katrin Silvius
http://drupal.org/project/domain_meta
Integrates with the Domain Access module, so each site of a multi-domain
install can separately control their meta tags.
* Meta tags Node Type, by Ariel Barreiro
http://drupal.org/project/nodewords_nodetype
Allows meta tag defaults to be controlled by content type, not just globally
and per node.
* SEO Friend, by Kristen Pol
http://drupal.org/project/seo_friend
Provides some assistance with ensuring that meta tags are all properly
assigned, which can be very useful for SEO beginners.
* Nodewords Meta Title, by Zoltán Adamek
http://drupal.org/project/nodewords_meta_title
Adds the <meta name="title" /> tag, which maybe be useful for some rare
scenarios.
Credits / Contact
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The current maintainer is Damien McKenna [5].
The original author of this module is Andras Barthazi. Mike Carter [6],
Gabor Hojtsy [7] and Robrecht Jacques [8] provided some feature enhancements,
while Alberto Paderno [9] maintained the module for much of its Drupal 6
lifecycle. Dave Reid [10] contributed greatly to the launch of v6.x-1.13, and
Nate Haug [11] played an instrumental role in deciding to scrap the ill-
conceived v6.x-1.12 release.
Development is currently sponsored by Media Current [12], previous sponsors
include Bluespark Labs [13] and others.
The best way to contact the authors is to submit an issue, be it a support
request, a feature request or a bug report, in the project issue queue:
http://drupal.org/project/issues/nodewords
References
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[1] http://drupal.org/project/nodewords_nodetype
[2] http://drupal.org/project/domain_meta
[3] http://drupal.org/project/domain
[4] http://drupal.org/documentation/install/modules-themes/modules-5-6
[5] http://drupal.org/user/108450
[6] http://drupal.org/user/13164
[7] http://drupal.org/user/4166
[8] http://drupal.org/user/22598
[9] http://drupal.org/user/55077
[10] http://drupal.org/user/53892
[11] http://drupal.org/user/35821
[12] http://www.mediacurrent.com/
[13] http://www.bluesparklabs.com/