63Resolving Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool errors

Please note!

This art­icle has now been super­ceded by a new art­icle, which has been updated to use MicroData (schema.org) instead of Micro­Formats.  If you still wish to use Micro­Formats read on, but I recom­mend using MicroData and invite you to read the new art­icle, which will con­tin­ue to be updated with new inform­a­tion and new themes. [int­link id=“3500” type=“post”]New info on MicroData[/intlink].

Please note

I have moved the ori­gin­al con­tents of this post to new posts as the num­ber of themes I have instruc­tions for increases. There are now spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for [int­link id=“2948” type=“post”]Mystique 2[/intlink], [int­link id=“2949” type=“post”]Mystique 3[/intlink], [int­link id=“2468” type=“post”]Thesis[/intlink], [int­link id=“3015” type=“post”]Twenty eleven[/intlink] and [int­link id=“3017” type=“post”]Me Gusta by Cosmos[/intlink]

The ori­gin­al [int­link id=“2948” type=“post”]Mystique 2 article[/intlink] is the most detailed if you are look­ing for addi­tion­al inform­a­tion.  Below I have provided a gen­er­ic idea of what is required and where to start when try­ing to modi­fy a new theme

Part 1: Authorship information

You need 3 parts for this — you need each post to con­tain a link to your author page, you need your author page to have a link to your google pro­file (or google+ page) and you need your google pro­file (or google+ page) to have a link point­ing to your domain!

Deal with these in reverse order.

1. Log in to google+ or your google pro­file and add a pub­lic (it does need to be pub­lic) link in your pro­file inform­a­tion point­ing to your web­site.  For example — on my google+ pro­file I have a link to https://diymediahome.org
2. Use the code provided by Yoast to put a link to your google+ pro­file on your author page 
   • Install the Yoast SEO plu­gin or add the yoast code to functions.php
   • Go to your user inform­a­tion page (Dash­board: Users: Your Pro­file) in word­press and fill in the Google+ field (or Google Pro­file field if you used the yoast code) with a link to your google profile
   • Edit your theme’s author.php, find the code which dis­plays the author inform­a­tion (twit­ter account, web­site, etc.) and add an extra part in the same style to out­put the google+ link.  Make sure the href has a rel="me"
3. Add code so that the author inform­a­tion for each post links to your author pro­file page with a rel="author"
   • This is the trick­i­est bit — it may involve mul­tiple edits to mul­tiple files.  Start by look­ing at single.php (which does single pages), index.php, search.php, archive.php etc.  Look for the code which has a href="" to the author page and add in rel="author"

Part 2: Required hCard information (e.g. updated, entry-title etc.)

Each post needs some cor­rectly struc­tured markup con­tain­ing sum­mary inform­a­tion about it.

1. These edits will prob­ably go in the same places as at least some of the author edits in instruc­tion 3 in part 1.  Likely loc­a­tions are single.php, page.php, index.php, search.php, archive.php
2. In many cases it is simply a case of adding some rel="" entries to the exist­ing code — e.g. if your theme already shows an updated or pos­ted line inside a p or inside a span you can add rel="updated" to that p or span
3. You also need to add some more author related code — again, assum­ing you have the author name shown at the top of each post it is easy to add it there 
   • you need your name inside a tag with a rel="fn".
   • This tag needs to be inside a par­ent tag with a rel="vcard"
4. All of these extra tags need to be inside a par­ent ele­ment (maybe even the body tag) which has a rel="hentry". Most themes already have this code present

Note: Using rel="updated" on the date the post was pub­lished works, but strictly speak­ing isn’t always cor­rect.  If you have actu­ally updated a post then the updated and pub­lished dates will be dif­fer­ent.  Google will recog­nise both (as will humans if you show it) so it is bet­ter to add a bit of code that checks if the post has been updated.  To get the pub­lished date use the func­tion get_the_date() and to get the updated date use the func­tion get_the_modified_date().  If it has been updated then dis­play both the pub­lished date (with rel="published") and the updated date (with rel="updated").  If the post has­n’t been updated then just put the pub­lished date with rel="updated published".  An example of code which does this is included with the [int­link id=“2468” type=“post”]Thesis theme modifications[/intlink] article.