Integration

How does wp-parsely integrate with site pages?

wp-parsely sends tracking information for your traffic to Parse.ly’s servers, but also makes your pages and posts easily crawlable by the Parse.ly crawler. It achieves that by doing the following:

• Installs the Parse.ly <script> tag on every page of your WordPress site in the footer section.
• Maps various content properties from WordPress posts to appropriate fields in Parse.ly metadata. For example, the title of your post goes into the Schema.org/NewsArticle headline field, and the WordPress publication time of your post goes into the datePublished field.
• Understands your WordPress Category and Tag system, by mapping those to section and keywords, respectively.

How can I verify that the Parse.ly tracker was installed successfully?

You can enter your site URL in the Parse.ly Validator. You can also open your Parse.ly dashboard, or search in the JavaScript Console of your browser for PARSELY.lastRequest, or in your Network Console for pixel.parsely.com requests. Here’s an example of using Chrome’s developer tools to check pageviews.

If your page contains the tracking code, a message is returned in the validator similar to the example shown below:

How can I verify that wp-parsely outputs good metadata?

You can enter your page URL in the Parse.ly Validator. For example, if you enter arstechnica.com, you will see the following response for metadata regarding that URL:

You can also enter your site URL in the Google Rich Results Test. This test specifically informs you if all the structured data on the page can generate rich results, as a consequence of the metadata structuring by the Parse.ly plugin, as shown:

How can I see what has changed in the plugin?

The plugin follows Semantic Versioning for its release numbers.

To see the changes in each release, you can review the plugin’s public changelog. We strongly recommend checking the changes of each version before upgrading.

Customization

Can I prevent the automatic insertion of the JavaScript tracker?

This can be done by setting the “Disable JavaScript” setting to “Yes” in wp-parsely’s settings page, or by using the following filter:

add_filter( 'wp_parsely_load_js_tracker', '__return_false' );

Note: The filter will override the respective setting on the settings page. To be able to change the setting from within the settings page, this code must be removed.

Can the rendered metadata be customized or disabled?

The rendered metadata (JSON-LD or repeated metas, depending on your configuration) can be customized. You can use the wp_parsely_metadata filter, which sends three arguments: the array of metadata, the post object, and the parsely_options array:

add_filter( 'wp_parsely_metadata', 'filter_parsely_metadata', 10, 3 );
function filter_parsely_metadata( $parsely_metadata, $post, $parsely_options ) {
	$parsely_metadata['articleSection'] = '...'; // Whatever values you want Parse.ly's Section to be.
	return $parsely_metadata;
}

This filter can go anywhere in your codebase, provided it always gets loaded.

If you don’t want to manipulate all the generated metadata object and you just want to tweak part of it, the following filters are offered as well:

• wp_parsely_post_tags
• wp_parsely_post_type
• wp_parsely_post_category
• wp_parsely_pre_authors
• wp_parsely_post_authors
• wp_parsely_permalink

If you want to disable automatic metadata insertion completely, you can use the following way:

add_filter( 'wp_parsely_metadata', 'filter_parsely_metadata', 10, 3 );
function filter_parsely_metadata( $parsely_metadata, $post, $parsely_options ) {
	return array();
}

Can I disable parts of wp-parsely’s UI?

The following filters are provided to hide the Open on Parse.ly link on the admin bar and the posts list, respectively. If they return false, they won’t be rendered:

• wp_parsely_enable_admin_bar
• wp_parsely_enable_row_action_links

Can I access the window.PARSELY object?

For some advanced integrations, you need to hook custom JavaScript code to some events on the window.PARSELY object. To do so, our plugin supports WordPress JavaScript hooks. For example:

$script = '
window.wpParselyHooks.addAction("wpParselyOnLoad", "wpParsely", testFunc, 10);
function testFunc() {
	console.log("This is a hook");
}';
wp_add_inline_script( 'wp-parsely-loader', $script );

Third-Party and Feature Support

Is wp-parsely compatible with WordPress Network (Multisite)?

The wp-parsely plugin supports WordPress Networks, and it can be installed individually on each site or installed network-wide. The latter method is recommended to avoid version conflicts and duplications.

Regardless of how the plugin is installed, it must be configured for each site. You must go to each subsite’s Parse.ly wp-admin page and set up its individual Site ID.

Is wp-parsely compatible with the Co-Authors Plus plugin?

Yes! If you have Automattic’s Co-Authors Plus plugin installed, wp-parsely will automatically return a list of authors as metadata instead of a single author.

Does wp-parsely support Google Tag Manager?

Yes, Parse.ly works with Google Tag Manager. If you are using it and want it to handle the script loading, you can still use the plugin (for instance, for metadata rendering). In that case, you have to disable the loading of the script by adding the following WordPress filter to your codebase:

add_filter( 'wp_parsely_load_js_tracker', '__return_false' );

Note that JavaScript can also be disabled through the Parse.ly Settings Page in wp-admin. Disabling it through the UI will have the same effect as the filter above.

It is important that you make sure the Parse.ly tracker script is properly loaded from GTM. Tracking won’t work otherwise.

What advantages does wp-parsely have over Google Tag Manager?

In addition to automatically installing metadata on all your site pages, it is one of our most complete, automated, and robust integration options. It is the most popular way our customers integrate Parse.ly. We strongly recommend this method over other options.

Is wp-parsely compatible with AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, or Google Web Stories?

It is! The plugin hooks into Automattic’s official plugins for AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Google Web Stories.

AMP support is enabled automatically if the Automattic AMP plugin is installed.

For Facebook Instant Articles support, enable “Parsely Analytics” in the “Advanced Settings” menu of the Facebook Instant Articles plugin.

Does wp-parsely support Cloudflare?

When a website is running behind a Cloudflare DNS, their Rocket Loader technology will alter how JavaScript files are loaded. A JavaScript file can be ignored by Rocket Loader by using data-cfasync="false". Legacy wp-parsely versions would mark all scripts with this tag by default.

However, starting with wp-parsely version 3.0, that behavior must explicitly be enabled with the following filter:

add_filter( 'wp_parsely_enable_cfasync_attribute', '__return_true' );