Skip to main content

Changelog

This page mirrors the changelog in the plugin's readme.txt. The two files are kept in lock-step - any release that ships from the plugin must update both files in the same change, with identical wording. If you find a discrepancy between this page and the readme.txt entry for the same version, treat the readme.txt entry as authoritative and please report it.

1.6.1​

  • New: the audit now tells you when your featured image is not the image that shares (free). If a page's featured image is in a format social platforms do not display, an SVG for example, and the page shares a different image instead - one generated for you, or your SEO plugin's site-wide default social image - a notice on that page says so. The page shares correctly, which is why it is a notice and not a problem, but without it every page with that kind of featured image quietly shares the same stand-in picture and nothing in the editor tells you.
  • Note: findings are stored when a page is scanned, so this appears as your next scan runs. Use Re-scan on a row to see it straight away.

1.6.0​

  • New: robots directives sent as HTTP response headers are now read (free). A page can be told not to appear in search by the server, a CDN or a security plugin instead of by a tag in the page, and until now the audit could not see that - it reported the page as indexable while search engines were being told the opposite. The audit now reads the X-Robots-Tag response header as well as the robots meta tag, shows the header as the evidence, and, when the directive is only in the header, says so on the finding so you know to look at the server, CDN or security plugin rather than at your page.
  • Changed: every robots directive on a page now counts, not just the first one found. If a page carries a second robots tag, or a tag and a header, the Robots flag shows them combined and the findings take all of them into account.
  • New: when a social image is missing, the audit now tells you why where it can (free). If the page has a featured image in a format social platforms do not display, an SVG for example, the finding names the attachment and its format and tells you what to use instead. That is the usual cause of a page that looks correct in the editor and shares with no image at all.
  • New: og:image format check (free). If a page does declare a social image but serves it in a format social platforms do not display, that is now a warning of its own, with the served content type as the evidence.
  • Maintenance: internal tidying only - an unused results-table code path removed. No change to what the plugin does or shows.

1.5.1​

  • Fixed: the notice that groups repeated findings by content type was confusing and badly placed. It now appears only on the Findings tab, sits directly above the results it describes, reads as a short sentence with one line per finding, and each line links straight to those pages.

1.5.0​

  • New: heading structure checks (free). The audit now reads the body of each page as well as its head, and reports three things about your headings: no H1 heading, more than one H1, and a heading level skipped (for example a jump from H2 straight to H4). Each finding shows the page's own heading outline as evidence, and heading findings carry their own "Structure" label in the Findings list.
  • New: template grouping. Heading problems usually come from a template rather than from individual pages, so when a finding covers most pages of one type a single line above the results says so - for example "No H1 heading on 30 of 30 Venues" - and fixing the template clears every one of them at once.
  • Note: these are structural findings, not ranking advice, and the plugin says so on each one. Google states that the number and order of headings does not affect ranking, and no accessibility success criterion requires an H1 or forbids a skipped level. What is documented is what the audit reports: the HTML standard's rules, the headings Google can use to build your search result title, and the fact that screen reader users navigate pages by headings.
  • Note: the audit reads the HTML your page produces and cannot apply your stylesheet, so a heading hidden with CSS is still counted. That is part of why the hierarchy findings are notices rather than warnings.
  • Fixed: pages whose address redirects (for example a link without its trailing slash) could not be audited and were reported as scan errors. They are now audited at their real address, and an address that redirects somewhere else is skipped quietly instead of counting as a failure.

1.4.1​

  • Maintenance: internal hardening only, with no change to what the plugin does or shows. The Exclusion Rules tab is now drawn by the premium add-on itself rather than handed back to the free plugin as markup, and the "Excluded from the audit" summary line is passed through WordPress's own markup allowlist before it is displayed.

1.4.0​

  • New: critical alert when your whole site is hidden from search. If "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is left on under Settings > Reading, WordPress adds a noindex tag to every page and none of them can appear in search results - a classic launch-day miss when a site is copied from staging. The Site checks row now flags it, and it appears in the site-wide notice at the top of the dashboard.
  • Changed: on a page you have deliberately set to noindex, findings about how it would look in a search result (meta description length, missing canonical, hidden search thumbnail) are now listed as notices instead of issues or warnings. The page cannot appear in a search result, so those points cannot affect it. Nothing is hidden: every finding is still listed, still counted, and each one says why it was set aside.
  • Changed: social findings on a noindex page are untouched. A noindexed page shared in a chat or on a social platform still shows a link preview, so its Open Graph findings keep their full severity.

1.3.1​

  • Fixed: scans now pause and resume automatically when the site is briefly unavailable, for example while WordPress runs a scheduled update (maintenance mode), instead of recording every page as a scan error.
  • Fixed: pages that cannot be audited during a scan now keep their previous results instead of losing them; the report says so, and a follow-up scan runs automatically.

1.3.0​

  • New: favicon check (free). The audit now reads your rendered homepage and warns when no favicon is declared and /favicon.ico is missing, or when the declared icon URL does not resolve. Google shows favicons next to search results and chat platforms show your site icon beside link previews - a missing one renders as a generic placeholder.
  • Changed: the Site row is now called "Site checks: robots.txt, AI access, favicon" to reflect everything it audits.
  • Improved: the site-wide notice is now shared across PlugUpp plugins - dismissing a notice on one PlugUpp plugin's dashboard dismisses it on all of them, and two plugins reporting the same check no longer nag twice.

1.2.3​

  • Changed: a robots.txt served with HTTP 404 while still containing rules is now flagged as a warning in the free plugin - it is a server misconfiguration that makes the rules ineffective for every crawler, search engines and AI crawlers alike. Previously the free plugin only described it in the AI access panel while the row showed OK.

1.2.2​

  • Fixed: the AI access panel is now always reachable - the "Site: AI access and robots.txt" row lists on the Findings tab even when the site is perfectly healthy. Previously it only appeared when something was wrong.

1.2.1​

  • Fixed: the AI area label in the Findings list now has its own tint, matching the Search and Social labels.

1.2.0​

  • New: AI readiness. A new "Site: AI access and robots.txt" row shows which documented AI crawlers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Google-Extended) your robots.txt allows or blocks, with each provider's documented consequence - facts first, no invented scores.
  • New (Premium): AI readiness findings - warnings when your robots.txt or a blanket rule blocks AI search crawlers, when snippet directives limit how pages can appear in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and when noarchive/nocache opt pages out of Bing Copilot answers. Every finding cites the vendor's own documentation and respects deliberate choices.
  • Improved: the noindex notice now explains the page is also excluded from AI answer surfaces that ride the search index.

1.1.3​

  • Improved: scans now run to completion on their own and finish much faster on standard shared hosting. The scan keeps itself moving in the background instead of waiting for WP-Cron, which stays in place as a safety net.
  • Fixed: a scan could stall partway through on hosting where WP-Cron only runs when the site gets a visit. Stalled scans now recover automatically.

1.1.2​

  • Improved: the Issue filter dropdown now shows readable issue names (e.g. "Missing meta description") instead of internal codes, sorted alphabetically.

1.1.1​

  • Maintenance: internal code-quality improvements flagged by the WordPress.org Plugin Check. No change to features or behaviour.

1.1.0​

  • New: archive pages are now audited - the blog home, category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, and monthly date archives. They have their own titles, descriptions and social tags, and they rank in search and get shared like any other page. Archive rows appear on every tab with View, Re-scan and Exclude actions and an "Archives" choice in the type filter.
  • New: "Archive pages" setting under Settings, in the content scope group (on by default). Turning it off removes stored archive results; they return after the next scan if re-enabled.
  • Changed: results storage is keyed by a page reference internally so archive pages can be stored alongside posts. The upgrade is automatic and keeps your existing results.

1.0.35​

  • Changed: the plugin's display name is now "PlugUpp Search & Social Appearance Audit" - same plugin, clearer branding. Nothing else changes.
  • Improved: the Logs tab gains a new "Errors and warnings" log level, and downloaded logs get a self-identifying, timestamped filename.
  • Changed: the log file is now named search-social-appearance-audit.log (was ssaa.log, same folder), so a downloaded or emailed log names the plugin.

1.0.34​

  • Added a reminder above the results showing how many items are excluded from the audit, linking to the Exclusions screen.

1.0.33​

  • Maintenance: internal restructuring of the Logs tab. No change to features.

1.0.32​

  • Maintenance: internal restructuring of the scheduled scans and email report code. No change to features or behaviour.

1.0.31​

  • Maintenance: internal code-quality fix. No change to features or behaviour.

1.0.30​

  • Removed the old Excluded tab from the Dashboard - the items you have excluded from the audit are now managed on the Exclusions screen (Manual Exclusions tab).

1.0.29​

  • New Exclusions screen: a Manual Exclusions list of the pages you have excluded from the audit, plus rule-based auto-exclusion (Premium) to exclude pages by URL pattern, category or tag, author, or post type, with saved exclusion sets. Built for large sites where excluding page by page is not practical.

1.0.28​

  • Fixed the alignment of the star icon on the Premium settings tab.

1.0.27​

  • Renamed the Exclude/Include bulk actions on the Posts and Pages screens to "Appearance audit: Exclude" and "Appearance audit: Include" so they group with our other plugins' actions, and fixed the confirmation message to say "Appearance audit" instead of "scan".

1.0.26​

  • Maintenance: rendering, scanning and content discovery now run on a shared engine (the same one behind our Link & Image Health Audit plugin). No change to what the audit checks or how you use it.

1.0.25​

  • Polished the premium results filter bar so its controls are the same size as WordPress's standard list-table filters beneath them, for a consistent toolbar.

1.0.24​

  • The results list now uses WordPress's standard filters: status tabs (All, Published, Drafts, Scheduled, Pending) above the list and a content-type dropdown with a Filter button, so the two filters work independently and combine.

1.0.23​

  • Non-published pages now show their status the WordPress-standard way - for example "Title - Draft" shown in the title - matching the core Posts and Pages lists, instead of a separate pill.

1.0.22​

  • Polished the issues and warnings badges in the results table - a little more height, a subtle hover, and tidier spacing when they stack.

1.0.21​

  • Clearer badges in the results table. Clickable badges now carry a chevron, the Robots flag reads as a reference badge, and plain states like OK and Missing are no longer styled as buttons. The Issues column is wider so badges no longer wrap.

1.0.20​

  • The Issues column now flags warnings as well as critical issues, each with its own coloured badge. A green "OK" appears only when a page has no issues and no warnings.

1.0.19​

  • The Issues column now shows a neutral marker instead of a green "OK" on pages that have warnings. "OK" appears only when a page is clear of both issues and warnings.

1.0.18​

  • The dashboard summary now shows Issues, Warnings and Notices in colour-coded boxes, for an at-a-glance view of your site's status.

1.0.17​

  • Refreshed the plan and upgrade information shown in the plugin and on the plugin page to reflect the current plans.

1.0.16​

  • Scheduled email report wording now matches the rest of the plugin: it counts "findings" (all severities) rather than calling them all "issues", which now means critical problems only.

1.0.15​

  • New (premium): Changes since last scan. Each tab shows what changed compared with the previous full scan - newly flagged issues, fixes, and changed titles, descriptions or images - in a dedicated view, and the scheduled email report now lists the same per-page changes.

1.0.14​

  • Fixed: the Search and Social tabs now sort by that tab's own severity, so a page with a problem only in the other area no longer floats to the top where it just has a notice. The Findings tab still ranks across both areas.

1.0.13​

  • Scheduled email reports: the "only when" send option now offers "issues or warnings" and "issues only", and never sends for notices alone, so routine advisory items no longer trigger an email.

1.0.12​

  • Settings reorder: the Custom post types and Unpublished content options now sit directly under Content types, so all the "what gets audited" settings are grouped together.

1.0.11​

  • The dashboard summary and the renamed "Findings" tab now show separate Issues, Warnings and Notices counts, so a page of advisory notices is no longer reported as a red issue.

1.0.10​

  • "Issues" now means critical problems only. Warnings and notices have their own badges on each card, each opening its own list, so advisory items are no longer counted as issues.
  • Pages are now sorted by severity: pages with critical problems first, then warnings, then notices, then alphabetically.
  • The Search card no longer shows a separate Canonical row. Canonical findings now appear under the warning and notice badges, giving the card more room.

1.0.9​

  • Clicking Ignore in the issue details now shows a clear saving indicator, so it is obvious the change is being applied while the page updates.
  • The bulk actions on the Posts and Pages screens are now labelled "Exclude from Appearance audit" and "Include in Appearance audit", making it clearer which audit they apply to.

1.0.8​

  • The Search and Social tabs now sort worst-first by default - pages with the most issues at the top, then alphabetically within each - so the pages needing attention surface immediately. You can still sort by any column.

1.0.7​

  • New check: flags a meta description that is longer than your preview length (so search engines will truncate it) or very short.
  • New check: flags pages set to max-image-preview:none, where Google will not show a thumbnail in search results.

1.0.6​

  • Updated the bundled Freemius framework to version 2.13.2.

1.0.5​

  • Clicking a preview image now opens it full size with the platform's crop area highlighted, so you can see exactly what Facebook or Google keeps and what gets trimmed.

1.0.4​

  • The Social preview thumbnail is now larger (matching the Search preview height) and uses the true 1.91:1 share-card proportions.

1.0.3​

  • The Search and Social preview cards now name the specific field that is missing (for example "Missing meta description" or "Missing OG title") instead of a generic "Missing" label.

1.0.2​

  • Updates made in response to the WordPress.org plugin review.

1.0.1​

  • Improved: when a page fails to render during a scan, the log now records a short snippet of what the page returned - including the underlying PHP error when the page fatals - so render errors are diagnosable from the Logs tab without server access.

1.0.0​

  • Initial public release.