Schema Rating Stars Issues

Last Update: August 07, 2012
On Aug. 2nd, 2012, I purchased a new domain through GoDaddy, but it's hosted here at WA since I changed the nameservers. Now that we are no longer given the option to log directly into the control panel at Plesk and manage our sites and email accounts, I cannot create a new email account for my new site, and cannot create a new password to log into the webmail.

I can log into the email accounts of my other pre-existing sites, but I've never been able to get email forwarding to work on any. That's not what this post is about. I have submitted unresolved support tickets, and they should be in process. I've never been able to resolve the email forwarding problem in the past, and I think that I might have to submit MX info from GoDaddy to WA so that I can manage the email accounts through GoDaddy.

Email issues are not what this post is supposed to be about, however. I'm trying to resolve a couple of Schema issues here.

After re-watching Jay's excellent WAbinars on the 'Live Case Study', I've been trying to implement Google Authorship and the rich snippets schema coding to display rating stars on the site.

After updating my Google+ page and adding a profile to it, I updated and added the Schema coding to my site. After checking the site with Google's Rich Snippets checker, I was alerted to a couple of warnings:

Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”

In the dedicated forum for the 'Ninja SERP Strategies Revealed' WAbinar, Viterbi has a link to a very helpful article that he wrote, describing the steps to take to resolve them. I visited and worked my way through his article at [url]http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-rich-snippets-reviews-wordpress-blog/[/url]. It was greatly detailed and had an excellent explanation of how to resolve these Schema issues:

Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.

I don't have a problem with "entry-title", but I do with the "updated" and "author" issues.

I was excited at first, but despite extensive searching in several .php files, including the single.php file I couldn't find the code that needed amending, as per his instructions.

For the first time, I'm trying out the Weaver II Wordpress theme. I'm beginning to believe that there's something about it's file structure or code that's giving me the problems. I also have an issue with the way the theme is displaying the stars (vertically instead of horizontally). No matter what I do with the code, I can't get them to display horizontally, but that's another issue.

I'm certain that I could've resolved the Rich Snippets warnings by following Viterbi's instructions, but Weaver II's coding is different than what he describes. Would anyone have any experience resolving the issues that I'm experiencing?

Perhaps biting the bullet and purchasing the developers license of the Thesis theme is the answer, I don't know. I've read a lot of positive reviews on it, both from WA members, and from several experts on the internet. It would mean, however, having to learn php commands to be able to change website layouts, using what's known as "hooks" (positional targets) within the Thesis theme.

Thanks! ...to anyone with any helpful thoughts around these issues.

-John


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CSmith1 Premium
Also in regards to email, you can control it all via Gmail if you wanted https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/how-to-send-receive-domain-email-via-gmail
jdeHaan001 Premium
Hi Welshy, Thank you so much for replying. I watched your excellent video, and took your advice. Of the pre-existing email accounts, I set them up within Gmail. As for the brand new domain that I have WA hosting, as of August 2nd, 2012, there doesn't seem to be the ability to create a new email account. In other words, if I click to log into the 'Control Panel', a dialog displays telling me that the Plesk Control Panel has been removed "to make things easier". On this dialog box is a button that reads, "Manage Email". If I click this, however, I am completely disconnected from WA, and I must log back in.

Would you know how I might get around this obstacle? I have submitted a couple of Support Tickets, but I think the management is not having an easy time with this.
Labman_1 Premium
John, in the forum I posted a set of code that takes care of the issues you are speaking of. Take a look, last time I checked it was around page 3 or 4. Follow the thread I had a week of hell trying to solve these issues.

As for the e-mail.. Go to the menu item build websites and look at the header bar. One of the choices is e-mail. Type in your new e-mail addy and hit create.
jdeHaan001 Premium
Hey Labman, I had practically read that entire forum thread, and I'm not sure how I had missed that code you posted. Anyway, I did find it, and played with it awhile, and had some success with it, but not entirely. Well, this morning I finally did nail it, I’m pleased to say, thanks in part to you!

Based on many peoples opinions of how easy and automated Wordpress is, as far as designing, SEO, pinging, etc., I decided to build my most recent site using WeaverII (Antique Ivory sub-theme), free theme. I think I had read that you have used it, and liked it, although I noticed that you used the ‘Jenny’ theme as the site you were first trying to get the Rich Snippets to work.

The alternative for me was to purchase the developers license of the Thesis theme. Despite the touted ease and great flexibility in design, I would have to part with $164., plus I would need to learn some php coding in order to be able to reposition elements on the webpages. Not that I’m opposed to that, I just thought that I’d try WeaverII first, as that also appears to have a lot of design flexibility.

You know, I've been ambivalent about whether to stick with building sites with my Dreamweaver CS3, or to jump on board with most everyone else and find and use an adaptable Wordpress theme, and become familiar with it, even if it is a paid theme, as most recommend. Although I have built a few small sites using free versions of WP themes, I have also built a couple with Dreamweaver.

Well, I've just spent the last couple of days trying to get the Schema Rich Snippets coding to work on this latest mini-site, built on the WeaverII platform. Now, although I had to work through the issues of the stars not displaying correctly, I also needed to figure out and add some additional coding to allow Google to view the authorship, date, and entry-title properly. I finally discovered that after inserting and tweaking the code into the ‘HTML’ panel, if I then clicked over to the ‘Visual’ panel to see what my coding changes looked like, the damned editor would strip out some of my code!!!

That was the major cause of the Schema coding not working for me. It took awhile to figure this out. I don’t know what anyone else thinks about this, but I think it’s a serious flaw in this editor! It makes me wonder if this is prevalent across all themes, free and paid? How can anyone accept this behavior, when building sites already can take so much time and effort?

I really wouldn’t mind purchasing the Thesis theme, getting very familiar with it, and using it for all the future mini-sites that I plan on building, but I have to know that there isn’t some drastic quirk with it that’ll cause hair-pulling frustration every time I use it.

Thank you again buddy for helping out. I surely do appreciate it.

-John
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