Problems with Headspace Plugin? Guide to proper Headspace Configuration

Headspace is an advanced SEO plugin for your WordPress blog. I have been using it for all my blogs for last 2-3 years and it is one the most important and must have WordPress plugin. Headspace is actually used to configure meta data like titles, tags, description etc for each of your blogs posts, pages, categories etc. The latest version even allows you to change the theme, add custom plugin, more CSS and JavaScript to specific posts. These are just the main features which are used the most. For complete features visit the Headspace Plugin Page.

Many users who install the plugin for the first time face problems with it due to its complexity. Some themes define its own methods for displaying page titles and this can mess everthing up. One thing you can do to make sure that page title is always displayed properly is check your theme header file. Open the Theme editor in WordPress interface and browse to header.php, and in that file look for code between <title> …… and </title> . Whatever the code is replace it with:

<?php wp_title(‘ ‘); ?>

This will make sure that proper title is displayed as per your headspace settings.

Another problem faced is duplicate title tags for Previous Posts pages from home page and category page. Like for all pages like http://techites.com/page/2, http://techites.com/page/3, etc the title will be same and count as duplicate in Google Webmaster Tools. The fix is easy. Open your headspace configuration and add the following code to the previous title of your homepage and category pages (or any other page where you want the title to be unique):

%%page%%

The code will be replaced with current page number like- page 2 of 3, page 3 of 3 etc.

Another common problem is that wp_head is not called in header.php and Headspace cant insert its code into the page ay runtime. Make sure your theme header file contains code below just before the close of </head>:

<?php wp_head(); ?>

Category: How To's