XF 2.2 Meta 'description' missing on some pages within a thread

Kevin

Well-known member
I just noticed this on my own sites (2.1) but have found it happening here as well (XF 2.2.0 B x).... on a thread with multiple pages some of the subsequent pages don't have the meta 'description' tags. I get the same results in different browsers and is reproduceable.

For example.... https://xenforo.com/community/threads/what-are-you-listening-to.2426/

When viewing the source for page #111 here's the tags at the top....

URL: view-source:https://xenforo.com/community/threads/what-are-you-listening-to.2426/page-111

1598045326361.png

... but viewing the source for page #99 here's the tags at the top:

URL: view-source:https://xenforo.com/community/threads/what-are-you-listening-to.2426/page-99

1598045372689.png
 
The meta description comes from the first post on the page. I think the unfurls below will demonstrate it:

Page 99

Page 111

There is no post content in the first post on page 99, there is just a media embed. So there's really no appropriate string to display there. We could display some other content there, maybe even the first post of the thread content (although that isn't automatically available to the template so it's not idea and it, itself may not have any content eitherl).

Worth noting in XF 1.5 we would have previously displayed [MEDIA] there and this was often not thought to be appropriate. We could display something totally generic like Thread X in forum Y | Page 99 but then that's not really any better.

On the whole there's nothing displayed because there's nothing useful to display and I think that's probably ok.
 
We could display some other content there, maybe even the first post of the thread content (although that isn't automatically available to the template so it's not idea and it, itself may not have any content eitherl).
For the purpose of 'sharing' the URL using mechanisms that use the page meta tags, there should something in the description value. Yes, ideally the URL without the page parameter is what's 'shared' but in practice those other URLs will find there way.

For a certain crowd, they'll also won't be happy that the lack of a description meta tag brings down their Lighthouse ranking.

We could display something totally generic like Thread X in forum Y | Page 99 but then that's not really any better.
Something generic like that is not necessarily any better from a relevancy perspective but it'd still be better than nothing.
 
 
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