Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?

[Function5]

Hi,

I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally.

Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ.

Example:

Normal visitor sees:

About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts

Google and SEOMOZ see:

About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts

I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work.

Any help or explanation would be appreciated.

[blu42media]

Hey Gabriel-

Quick and dirty... you could change the meta title to Function 5 - Metro Vancouver IT and Web Experts.

Have you tried putting the full & in the meta title?  There might be a double-conversion issue going on there.

-John

[Function5]

Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that but not luck. The odd thing is that using Google's Webmaster tools, I see that the meta title and some of the headings have the code in them whereas other body text doesn't. Either way, I need to resolve this.

I tested a page and here are a couple of lines:

 <code><title>IT & Web Services | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts</title>

Odd how the first & (and) looks fine whereas the second doesn't.</code>

[blu42media]

Ahh, you are right about the first ampersand.  You should probably take a look at the wp_title() function and see if it's doing any html_special_chars filtering.  Again, if nothing else seems to work, you could change up the "and" remove the possessive on Vancouver.

[Function5]

I've done what you've said and this is what I've come up with:

<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Does anything look odd?

[networkelites]

Hi Gabriel,

' Looks like an html entity code for some non-standard apostrophe.  Not sure why though, it looks normal. Your apostrophe might need to be changed to a single quote instead.

[Function5]

Well what would be the html entity code for a standard apostrophe. And even if that is solved, the & is still not displaying correctly.

I've searched many forums for the answer but nothing seems to be coming up!

[blu42media]

This worked for me....

$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');

The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this.  You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.

Let me know how it works out.

[Function5]

Thanks for looking into this. Approximately where would I place this code?

[blu42media]

Look in your header.php file.  Here's what the <title>tag code might look like.  Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece.  This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>

[Function5]

Okay, I found the line:

<title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

And I tried inserting your code multiple ways but now Fetch as Googlebot is saying the site is unreachable. I've reversed but still get same problem...

Strange stuff.

[blu42media]

Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:

<title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>

[Function5]

Fixed some of the other issues with my site (had a bunch of white spaces in my php files) but this is still not working. I inserted your code and it doesn't break anything, but it doesn't work either from what I can tell...

[blu42media]

Gabriel-

Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?

[Function5]

I actually removed site caching because it was causing some problems. But yes, I had it on previously.

I'm wondering if the wordpress function - wp_texturize - is doing something funny to the titles...

[Function5]

One more thing - I've noticed that Google, SEOMOZ, and Firefox's View Source all show apostrophes, ampersands, and other characters as code not just in the title tag but also throughout the body of the page - so it is a general problem.

[blu42media]

Gabriel-

It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page.  There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else.  The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone.  For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you.  To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you.  The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.

So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title.  I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?

If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me.  This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.