A month on from our last round-up, here’s what has shipped. The theme this time is SEO: two of our extensions now fix the warnings audit tools keep flagging on Joomla sites, without you touching a line of code. And if Joomla has been grumbling when it checks for updates, see the last section.
MetaGen is now a free SEO tune-up
MetaGen started as a meta description generator. It’s now a one-stop panel for the SEO issues that tools like Ahrefs report on Joomla sites — still completely free.
The new SEO tune-up panel on the dashboard shows each issue with a live count of affected articles and a one-click fix:
- Over-length meta descriptions and titles. Finds only the descriptions over 160 characters and titles over 60, and shortens them to fit. Shortening titles is a separate, explicit choice because it changes the headline; the URL is preserved either way.
- Headings. Demote extra H1s to H2, or swap a heading level across articles — for example promote orphaned H3s, optionally within one category.
- Gaps. Regenerate meta descriptions that are too short, and list the articles whose images are missing alt text.
- “Duplicate pages without canonical”. MetaGen adds a canonical link tag to article pages, so the same article reached by different URLs isn’t counted several times over. It works alongside the Redirect plugin and steps aside if a canonical already exists.
- Social previews. Open Graph and X (Twitter) card tags on article pages, with the Open Graph URL matching the canonical.
Every change is recorded in an Articles changed list, with the original title kept alongside the new one so you can put anything back by hand. Broken link and image checks are next.
Cassiopeia Themer — share cards, and a favicon that actually updates
We wrote on 7 September about self-hosted Google Fonts. Since then:
- Social share cards. Themer’s content plugin now adds Open Graph and X card tags, so a shared link shows the title, description and image instead of a bare URL. It adds canonical links too. All three switches sit together under Themer → Options → SEO.
- Favicons that refresh in Chrome. Chrome ignores SVG tab icons and caches favicons hard, so Themer now also serves a versioned PNG. Open Identity and press Save once after updating to generate it. Home-screen icons now keep your logo’s real proportions.
- Download a profile icon. A new Identity button gives you a 512×512 PNG of your icon on your brand background, ready to use as a social avatar.
- Fixed: saving Joomla’s global Options page for Themer could reset your Marketing (Analytics, AdSense, Ahrefs, consent mode) and Author Schema settings. Fixed in 3.5.82 — if yours were cleared, re-enter them once and they’ll hold.
Content Amplifier — a calmer workbench, and posts for milestones
- Set the schedule once. Choose Start on and Rotation at the top of a tab and every post in it follows; tweak any single post under its own Scheduling section. Posted items are read-only with a View live link.
- Better-matched copy. LinkedIn posts include the article link so LinkedIn shows a preview card, posts keep normal capitalisation, and once a beat has copy for one channel the others are written to match it.
- Social posts for milestones and deadlines. Open a milestone, click Social posts, and compose per channel — your own words or an AI draft from the milestone’s notes — with the same scheduling and repeat controls as article posts.
- Times in your timezone, and unsaved edits are kept when you move between campaign beats.
- Fixed: “Post now” on a one-off post no longer sends it again at its scheduled time.
Verified Forms — consent that means something
- A proper consent field. The new Consent checkbox stores yes or no plus the exact wording shown at the time, so a submission stays auditable after you change the form.
- Consent decides the list. Link a consent checkbox to an audience (Marketing or Updates) and a person joins only if they tick it. Previously, confirming a submission always added someone to Marketing. If a form of yours relied on that, add a consent field mapped to Marketing to keep collecting.
- Intro and footer content with simple formatting, per-field help text read out to screen readers, browser autofill for name and email, and a built-in honeypot that drops spam bots — no CAPTCHA.
Also this month
- App directory: mobile apps listed with Subscriptions Manager can now link to the Amazon Appstore alongside Apple and Google Play.
- Article Generator: saving global Options no longer re-triggers the setup wizard.
If Joomla says “Could not parse” when checking for updates
Some hosts apply a security challenge to our main website that Joomla’s update checker can’t answer. Every Multizone extension now checks for updates from a dedicated address, updates.multizone.co.uk, applied automatically when you install this month’s release. Nothing to configure, and updates remain free with no key required. Update each extension once and the error goes away for good.
Updating
All of these arrive through the normal Joomla Extensions → Update screen. Take a backup first, and check your site after updating.
Thanks for using our extensions for Joomla. If MetaGen clears a warning that’s been nagging you for months, we’d love to hear about it.