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One block-editor SEO UI, powered by your engine in the background.

Description

Outstand SEO provides one custom Gutenberg sidebar that drives whichever powerful SEO plugin is active in the background — The SEO Framework or Yoast SEO — while suppressing that plugin's own editor UI. The background engine keeps producing all frontend SEO output (wp_head, schema, sitemaps); Outstand SEO only replaces the editing UX.

How it works

• Engine adapters (includes/Engines/) detect the active SEO plugin, disable its native editor UI, expose its post meta to REST, and describe a canonical field map (canonical field → native meta key + value codec). EngineManager resolves the active engine in priority order (TSF, then Yoast).
  • TSF: the_seo_framework_seobox_output filter removes the metabox; fields map to _genesis_* / _social_image_* / _primary_term_*.
  • Yoast: wpseo_enable_editor_features_{post_type} → false removes the metabox and the block sidebar / pre-publish / document panels; fields map to _yoast_wpseo_* with value codecs for Yoast's encodings (3-state noindex, comma-separated robots-adv, is_cornerstone, etc.).
• SEO sidebar — a dedicated SEO editor sidebar (PluginSidebar, opened from the icon in the editor header or the more menu) with collapsible General / Social / Visibility sections that mirror The SEO Framework's metabox. Title/description and OG/Twitter title/description fields show a character counter colored against a recommended range. Built from core @wordpress/components; each control renders only when the active engine supports that field (config localized as window.outstandSeo). Fields write the active engine's native post meta directly, so the engine renders the frontend unchanged — no duplicated data, no sync.
• SEO Analysis panel — a document panel in the default Settings sidebar with the focus keyphrase and lightweight on-page checks (keyphrase placement, content / title / description length, links), scored with the WordPress admin status colors. Editor-only; the keyphrase persists on the engine's native key.
• Breadcrumbs — instead of shipping its own block, Outstand SEO overrides the core Breadcrumbs block (core/breadcrumbs, WordPress 7.0+) so the stock block renders the active engine's trail (tsf_breadcrumb() / yoast_breadcrumb()) and its BreadcrumbList schema. The core block's controls are honored per instance where the engine supports them (separator, show/hide the home and current crumbs, front-page display, and a custom home label); a per-engine capability map hides or annotates the rest. On WordPress below 7.0 the core block doesn't exist, so this feature is simply unavailable — the rest of the plugin is unaffected.

Supported fields

Fourteen canonical fields (title, description, canonical, robots noindex/nofollow/noarchive, Open Graph + Twitter title/description/image, focus keyphrase, redirect, primary terms) work on both engines. A handful are engine-specific — TSF-only (remove site name, exclude search/archive, Twitter card type) and Yoast-only (noimageindex, nosnippet, cornerstone, separate Twitter image). Unsupported fields are hidden for the active engine.

See Engine field support for the full matrix (native meta keys, codecs, and the TSF Focus-extension interop).

Requirements

• WordPress 6.7+
• PHP 8.2+
• One supported SEO engine active: The SEO Framework or Yoast SEO. With neither active the plugin is dormant and shows an admin notice (no panels, no fatals).

Installation

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP from the Releases page.
2. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin in your WordPress admin area.
3. Upload the ZIP file and click Install Now.
4. Activate the plugin.

Install with Composer

To include this plugin as a dependency in your Composer-managed WordPress project:

1. Add the plugin to your project using the following command:

composer require outstand/seo

2. Run composer install.
3. Activate the plugin from your WordPress admin area or using WP-CLI.

Switching SEO engines

Each engine owns its own post meta, so switching engines is a deliberate act, not something this plugin migrates automatically. To move existing SEO data between engines, use the destination engine's importer (e.g. The SEO Framework's Transport extension imports Yoast / Rank Math / SEOPress data into TSF's keys). Once data is in the target engine's keys, Outstand SEO's sidebar edits it transparently.

Adding an engine

Adapters implement Outstand\WP\SEO\Engines\EngineInterface (see includes/Engines/AbstractEngine.php for shared REST-meta registration). Register a new adapter in EngineManager::candidates(). An adapter declares: is_active(), disable_native_editor_ui(), register_rest_meta(), get_js_config() (field map + codecs + primary-term key pattern + focus-keyphrase key), and — for breadcrumbs — get_breadcrumb_capabilities() and get_breadcrumb_html().

Changelog

All notable changes to this project are documented in CHANGELOG.md.

Credits

The SEO sidebar icon is from the Industrial Sharp UI Icons collection by Siemens AG, licensed under the MIT License. See CREDITS.md.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0-or-later.