Mircodata markup container in body of page

[ThridHour]

I have a question about the "container" that's created whenever microdata markup is applied. What is the purpose of this? I know Google says it helps them understand your content etc. but it creates a really bad eyesore wherever microdata markup is used. Basically a box with all the markup details right there in the body. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this why microdata markup has been so slow to be adopted by webmasters? I understand "hiding" the box in your CSS is not a good idea either. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[LesleyPaone]

I am pretty sure you are doing it wrong. Can you link me? The markup should all be hidden normally, it is used as a way to describe elements that are on the page already, not for adding new elements.

[ThridHour]

The site is in Wordpress and I've been using a plugin called all in one schema.org rich snippets and schema creator by raven tools.

• As you can see it creates quite the eye sore especially if you were to start marking up a lot of stuff. Here is an example:

http://historyofmormonism.com/2014/03/26/hawns-mill-massacre-1838-resulted-30-mormon-casualties/

• Schema creator by raven tools lets you add markup right into the body of the page like you will see about a paragraph down. I "marked up" the person Alex Baugh just for an example. You will notice the container it creates right inside the article.

• If you scroll down to the bottom you'll notice a larger summary box, this is created by the other plugin; all in one schema.org rich snippets that marks up and creates a summary of the overall webpage.

• If you look at the support forums for this plugin here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/all-the-info-i-fill-goes-directly-into-my-post?replies=5#post-4030332

• One of the authors of the plugin mentions that this box is necessary and includes a link to Google Webmaster forums backing it up, the 4th question down here:

https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-rich-snippets#display

• I also thought that maybe it was only this one plugin; all in one schema.org rich snippets but this other plugin from Raven Tools does the same thing. These two plugins are also two of the most popular schema microdata plugins on Wordpress.

• This person has a similar question about the raven tools plugin

https://github.com/raventools/schema-creator/issues/104Thanks for your replies, I really appreciate it.

[ThridHour]

Does anyone else have insight on this?

[Everett]

Hello,

The plugin creates a new CSS file, which you can access and control to make the data appear any way you like:
http://historyofmormonism.com/wp-content/plugins/schema-creator/lib/css/schema-style.css?ver=1.050

Yes, the data that you are marking up needs to appear on the page, but you can mark up existing data instead of using a plugin that adds new data to the page. Or you can use the plugin to add the data to the page and customize the look by adjusting the CSS file.

My advice would be to learn how to add the markup yourself so you can just apply it to whatever it is on the page that you're trying to mark-up instead of relying on the plugin. This way you don't get the ugly box. It isn't that difficult if you can already do basic HTML. For example:

Here is what the plugin is doing:

Alex Baugh
Brigham Young University
Professor

The Div ID for "Schema_block" is what is creating that container. In the CSS file I linked to above it reads as follows (bolding is mine):

#schema_block {
    clear:both;
    margin:0 auto 10px auto;
   ** background: #EEEEEE;**
**    border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;**
    padding: 1em;
    overflow: hidden;
}

You can make that look like whatever you want it to look like. For instance, you could completely remove the margin, background, border and padding. It's not the "box" that Google needs to see, it's the content (e.g. Alex Baugh, Brigham Young University, Professor) on the page and the markup in the code that surrounds it.

I hope this clarifies the issue for you. A good designer/developer should be able to provide further assistance if you are not comfortable editing code or CSS files.

[ThridHour]

Thank you very much. That is just what I was looking for.