Old Posts Aren’t Indexing
Some of my customers faced with an issue when posts created or updated after plugin installation appear in the index, but old posts – don’t. There are actually a could reasons why this could happen, let’s figure it out step by step.
1. Is WP Cron Working on Your Server?
WP Cron – is a standard WordPress task scheduler, it allows to run functions automatically without user interventions.
It is required for the plugin to index old posts in the background without affecting overall website performance (what if you have thousands of posts).
How to check if it is working? Just create a test post or page on your website and set its publish date in the future, let’s say 2 minutes later.
Once you’ve scheduled this post, let’s wait for 2 minutes or whatever timeframe you set. If the post will be publish, everything is OK with WP Cron on your websites, if not – you will find out by receiving “Missed schedule” message on all posts page.
First of all, if you’re using basic authentication on your website, you need to make sure either to turn if off or install “WP Cron HTTP Auth” plugin, it is free.
Second – open your wp-config.php file in your website folder and try to find this line in it:
define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);If it is presented in the file, comment or delete it. If not – the only solution is to contact your hosting/server support team and to ask them to turn on WP Cron on the server.
2. Are the Posts Excluded from The Index In Settings?
First of all please go to Settings > Index in your Network Admin dashboard. We need the first tab, which is “Globals”.
Check these three options:
- Do you have the list of all custom post types you are going to index presented in “Default Post Types” options?
- Do you have the list of all post statuses you are going to index presented in “Default Post Statuses” option?
- How old are your posts? Did you set “Remove indexes posts older than” option accordingly?
If everything is OK, you could also check the Index options for each site individually. In order to do that in Network Admin please go to Sites > All sites, then select a site, click “edit” link, then go to “Index” tab.
So, that should help.