Structured Data Errors

[Gregg]

Hi,

We’re getting numerous structured data errors in Google’s Search Console. The category heading is: hentry (markup: microformats.org)

The specific errors are:
– location: A value for the location field is required.
– summary: A value for the summary field is required.

I’ve seen some previous threads from 2014 where these issues were discussed but there wasn’t any resolution posted.

Re Location error: I did see a thread where someone mentioned that the Venue (location) was displayed in a sidebar on the page. We are using the Eventica Theme, and I’ve included a screenshot for you to view.

Thank you
Gregg

[Cliff]

Hi Gregg.

Sorry you’re seeing these issues.

Could you please provide a link to a single event that is causing the error in https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/?

[Gregg]

This reply is private.

[Cliff]

Gregg, I see you have a non-standard WordPress theme. We can only provide support for Twenty Sixteen and the like.

Could you please switch to Twenty Sixteen and see if that URL is still throwing those errors with Google’s testing tool?

[Gregg]

Hi Cliff,

CAn you point me to the list of themes you support on your site. I can’t find the list and want to know what’s considered “and the like” to see what other themes I can use.

Thanks

[George]

Hey Gregg,

You posed the above questions in a separate thread over here ? https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/supported-themes/

I wanted to confirm here that I have responded to the above thread, so definitely check out that reply.

Cheers,
George

[Mathew]

Gregg,

I believe this issue may have been addressed in version 1.10.0 of Eventica. Please read the change log of the theme author.

If it is not solved by updating the theme to the latest version, I would open a support ticket with Tokopress.

Hope this helps.

[Cliff]

Gregg, I do believe George fully answered your question at that other thread.

Mathew, thanks for giving Gregg that heads up.

Gregg, please let me know if it is it okay to close this thread or if you still needed help here.

Thank you.

[Gregg]

As I wrote to George, if there is no information posted on the themes you support, then how can a customer like myself make an informed decision about what theme to use?

I’m now caught in a poor situation, and you’ve provided no solution other than entirely changing a theme. It’s really not a very customer-centered product if you’re not providing such critical information.

Very disappointed.

Who in sales can I contact about this issue?

[Cliff]

I am, of course, sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction. It’s never ideal for a customer to feel stuck between the support of 2 separate products/companies.

We state in our Scope of Support / Terms that we do not provide support for integrating our plugin with any particular themes.

Any theme that states it supports our plugin, like these at ThemeForest, is stating they’ve implemented/integrated our plugin into their theme. We are not claiming that our plugin works with their theme. Some themes do minor integration, like making the styling match. Other themes do more in-depth integration, like re-arranging elements on the page, even adding new data to be displayed or removing data that we normally display.

For your specific situation with metadata, I don’t know why their theme would do what they do; that’s a question for them.

If you need some coding help beyond that of your theme’s support, you may want to reference our documentation and list of known customizers.

All of us who handle support is also the sales support team. We answer pre-sales questions in the Pre-Sale Forum, and forum support is the only support we provide, as stated in those Scope / Terms links, above.

Sorry again. We definitely want to be of help to you and others in your situation, but we cannot provide support for all themes out there. We take the approach of coding our plugins to WordPress best practices and that usually means it works well with all themes that do the same. However, some themes, like I said, take a more opinionated approach to integrating with our plugins. Sometimes this is really appreciated by users and sometimes the opposite, like in your case.

The good news, if you do switch themes, is that your data in our plugin should still be there since it isn’t reliant on any specific theme.

Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions on this topic. If you’d like to share something with management, you can reply to this thread, either in a Public or Private response, and I’ll pass it along to them.

[Gregg]

Given I’m not a technical person, reading the documentation didn’t help me understand which themes I should consider switching to.

So I can ensure I pick a theme that is compatible, can I send you the themes I’m considering? The only one i have right now is: ExtraVersion: 1.3.9; By Elegant Themes

[Cliff]

Gregg, we cannot provide such advice as we do not continually test the themes as they get updated (or don’t when our plugin does update). I know we have many users who run the Divi theme (also by Elegant Themes) so I’d assume that works.

This is why we try our best to help provide troubleshooting steps when it’s apparent the theme is the issue, but we don’t actually integrate with themes or continually test any of them. The only ones we’re really committed to are the WordPress default themes like TwentyFourteen, TwentyFifteen, TwentySixteen, etc.

Ironically, most themes you pick that don’t mention specific integration with our plugin are probably the ones that would integrate most seamlessly because our plugin would essentially be free to do its own thing. Again, themes that say they work with our plugin probably do something customized to make it unique.

Recently (a few months ago), we also provided a copy of the theme we use for our demo site. You can download that theme at the bottom of http://wpshindig.com/about/ but we aren’t in the theme business and don’t provide support for the theme. It probably has less options than every other theme out there too, since I believe it’s pretty bare-bones.

Honestly, this is the biggest downside to the modularized way WordPress works. It’s not an issue specific to just our plugin.

For themes that say they integrate with our plugin, I’d suggest running their demos through Google’s markup tester and see if it’s pleasing to you vs our demo site’s markup.

Let me know if there’s anything more I can help with here.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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