View excerpt on url link

I think I’ve been labouring under a misapprehension… I thought if a page was indexed by a search engine it would include as a minimum a title, excerpt, rich snippet maybe etc. I wanted a reader to be able to access this url and see at least this eg title, excerpt etc but if they want to see more they are taken to the subscription page. However, this isn’t happening. What do I need to do which is at least an automated process and doesn’t involve me writing shortcode for each post?

Hello Nigel,

I’m afraid I don’t understand what the problem is. Currently, if s2Member protects a piece of content then not even search engines will be able to access it, unless they can prove they are a member in your website (which AFAIK, is not possible).

If users access your website, can they see an excerpt of the content? Even if it’s blocked.

– Eduan

In an ideal world s2 would only protect the content which is actually in the content box. Search engines and potential readers would be able to access the posts using titles and excerpts. Otherwise, Search engines won’t index the site at all so there is no way for anyone to know what is on the site and there is also no way to lure people into subscribing. Obviously one can set up manual conditionals etc on every post but this is hugely time consuming and is not easy to manage. Best would be if there was a global setting to permit what I have described above.

Surely it is a major issue for any S2 member user that search engines are not indexing key articles?

You mentioned the main content box. Is there another box besides that?
Are you using some kind of SEO plugin?

– Eduan

Yes, yoast. Do you understand the problem?

Pages protected by S2 are not indexed by Google!! Pages protected by S2 do not give a reader a chance by title and excerpt only to see what content may be on a page.

I suppose this might be something covered by shortcodes but adding shortcodes to every post would be too onerous. Are there php commands I can add into the template which protect content but not tile and excerpt? Do you understand the problem?

I have viewed the helpful video s2Member (Content Restriction Trouble?). I think I made an error in restricting some content via category ids because this was a simpler way to edit a large number of posts – it meant after all I did not have to use the s2 drop down for each post. I hadn’t appreciated that this would completely restrict all content for these posts including search engines etc.

However, I still have an issue which I would be grateful if you could explain. If s2 is protecting the permalink of the post how does a search engine obtain the detail required to index the post and what is the permalink it gives to the post so that someone who searches for an article can find it on the site if only in an archive view, for example? Thanks for the clarification.

Sorry… another question. Can you think of a quick way I can remove the category restriction and bulk set a membership level for the posts I have removed from category restriction? Thanks.

Would you mind if I gave you a specific example of what I am talking about? Also, please check my profile for the site url.

case study: This is the link to the page I am discussing below (which is protected by s2): http://preview.tinyurl.com/8c9gvqv.

The article is protected to Level 3 – there is no other protection on this post (eg no category or tag restriction). It has one category = ‘Feature’ and several tags = ‘anthropomorphism, Bartoshuk, Bourdieu, choice, health, Horney, Issue 2, personality theory, Peynaud, psychology, Sperry, taste’. If you check Google (e.g. site:mywebsite.com) it shows up ONCE but only under the general category of ‘Feature’ – there is no individual entry for this post.

If you Google ‘Personality and wine’ it eventually appears on page 5 of the results with one tag indexation under the tag ‘personality theory’.

Now, I am using SEO (Yoast) and the article shows the following:
Your focus keyword was found in:
Article Heading: Yes (1)
Page title: Yes (1)
Page URL: No (this isn’t right as you can see)
Content: Yes (2)
Meta description: Yes (1)

So:
1. why isn’t it showing up in Google as a post in its own right?
2. does this illustrate that every title also needs to written into the tag?
3. a basic flaw in S2 because every article needs to have its own indexation by the search engines and not just appear in a category or tag archive.
4. what is the point of using SEO plugin on a protected post?
5. How can this situation be improved?

Thx.

any ideas? Thank you.

I wanted a reader to be able to access this url and see at least this eg title, excerpt etc but if they want to see more they are taken to the subscription page.

I suppose this might be something covered by shortcodes but adding shortcodes to every post would be too onerous. Are there php commands I can add into the template which protect content but not tile and excerpt?

Right, you need to use shortcodes in the post’s body instead of protecting the whole post with an access restriction that’d cause a redirection to the Membership Options Page.

To apply this to every post, I guess you’d have to edit the post’s template, editing the content to wrap it with the conditonal, or whatever customization you want. http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_content

However, I still have an issue which I would be grateful if you could explain. If s2 is protecting the permalink of the post how does a search engine obtain the detail required to index the post and what is the permalink it gives to the post so that someone who searches for an article can find it on the site if only in an archive view, for example? Thanks for the clarification.

If the post is restricted so users can’t access it, neither will search engines have access to it. If you don’t add Alternative Views restrictions, then the post will be listed in archives and home page. The post’s content will be displayed in full there, or until the “more” tag if you use it. http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/

Can you think of a quick way I can remove the category restriction and bulk set a membership level for the posts I have removed from category restriction?

Just remove the category’s ID from the Category Restriction and save. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Category Access Restrictions[/hilite]

If the post is still restricted after that, check if it isn’t also being restricted by the Post, Tag or URI restrictions. [hilite path]Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options[/hilite]

1. why isn’t it showing up in Google as a post in its own right?

Because the post is protected and Google could not index it, since the bot got redirected to the Membership Options Page.

3. a basic flaw in S2 because every article needs to have its own indexation by the search engines and not just appear in a category or tag archive.
4. what is the point of using SEO plugin on a protected post?
5. How can this situation be improved?

Posts may need to be completely hidden in some sites, and having them indexed is not desirable, especially because the content would then be in the search engine’s cache and accessible without paying/registering in your site for it.

If you want to protect the post but have part of the content visible, then you’d have to use conditionals in the post itself to show what you want to show and hide what you want to hide, and the bot would be able to land on the post without being redirected.

---

I hope that helps. :)

OK, so no customer support on this one.

I have seen this post: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/protected-content-and-seo/ but the answers aren’t exactly helpful. In fact, the basic conclusions are wrong. Of course, one doesn’t want protected site content to be read (without fulfilling any obligations which exist e.g. payment) but it is completely wrong to suggest that one doesn’t want a search engine to index that page – on the contrary, it is essential.

Apart from s2 support who are ignoring me does anyone have any ideas or similar experiences and suggestions?

Apart from s2 support who are ignoring me does anyone have any ideas or similar experiences and suggestions?

We seem to have posted at the same time. You can read my previous reply above, addressing your questions. :)

I have seen this post: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/protected-content-and-seo/ but the answers aren’t exactly helpful. In fact, the basic conclusions are wrong. Of course, one doesn’t want protected site content to be read (without fulfilling any obligations which exist e.g. payment) but it is completely wrong to suggest that one doesn’t want a search engine to index that page – on the contrary, it is essential.

Well, this varies from site to site, so we can’t please everyone with the default behavior. We opted for treating the search engine bot the same we do any other guest, because that’s the experience guests will have when they try to open the page.

If your post is restricted and redirecting to the Membership Options page, that’s what the bot gets too. If you want to let the visitor open the post, then so will the bot be able to open it. So to protect content without protecting the post itself, we made the conditionals available.

Hi Cristián. Thanks for the reponses. Seems clearer now and I understand why you chose the route you did but it isn’t good for me nor for many others – maybe you should put it to a vote? Without conditionals on every post it also means, for example, that rich snippets are a waste of time in posts where otherwise they could be very helpful. There are many other examples of why this isn’t satisfactory. Another is because it means that adjusts to levels or other tests on membership level will have to be edited on every post – for example, say one decides to implement ‘content dripping’ later on – just not going to happen, is it?

I think you misunderstood this question:
Can you think of a quick way I can remove the category restriction and bulk set a membership level for the posts I have removed from category restriction?
You wrote:

Just remove the category’s ID from the Category Restriction and save. Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Category Access Restrictions

If the post is still restricted after that, check if it isn’t also being restricted by the Post, Tag or URI restrictions. Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options

I meant that I’ve removed category restriction on 100 posts. How can I quickly implement some restriction – without having to edit each post? Probably no way…

The difficulty with the template approach is that a particular template may not be set up to work well with the scripting. For example, suppose I use this:

<?php
if ($categories = get_categories ())
   {
       foreach ($categories as $category)
           {
               if (!is_permitted_by_s2member ($category->cat_ID, "category"))
                   continue;
               /* Skip it. The current User/Member CANNOT access this Category,
               or any Posts inside this Category, or any of its sub-Categories. */
           }
   }
?> 

So, we’re back to using category restrictions because otherwise I’d have to set up templates for each type of post and the way it can be accessed by a particular level. And, as we know, category restrictions are the most prohibitive.

In my single post template I’ve got lots of stuff but basically the main code is this one:

<?php the_content(); ?>

So, where would I put any php conditionals around that? The ‘more’ tag doesn’t work in single posts (it is ignored). Even if I add

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

BEFORE the content reference I will still have to go back and edit all of my posts again as otherwise this will appear as duplicate copy so there is no advantage at this stage in trying a template approach because either way (template or post only conditionals) I will have to re-edit each post – I have over 400 posts. Also, in trying to use rich snippets I can’t do this using a template approach.

All of this goes to show that planning the use of a plugin like S2 for a user is the most important thing before its installation and deployment. However, given its complexity (and therefore its usefulness – it is a great plugin by the way) this is hard to do if one has no experience in its use prior to installing it. Maybe we could all work on a list of considerations prior to deployment?

In my single post template I’ve got lots of stuff but basically the main code is this one:

<?php the_content(); ?>

Well, I’d try something like this:

[hilite pre_code]

Message to non-logged in visitors.

[/hilite]

Maybe we could all work on a list of considerations prior to deployment?

Well, we take into account every comment, request and suggestion that gets maid, and are doing our best to include as much as possible in s2Member. There was so much, that we needed to rewrite the plugin to make it possible, and that’s what we’re doing.