How do I stop Yoast plugin from saving <sitename>.azurewebsites.net URLs as canonical

Question

How do I stop Yoast plugin from saving <sitename>.azurewebsites.net URLs as canonical

massad 65

The default <sitename>.azurewebsites.net domain is getting saved in the Yoast plugin somehow. This is the most popular Wordpress plugin for SEO. You can see it in their database tables. You can manually update it, but it could get overwritten because it's not clear how they got there in the first place.

When the site loads, this URL is added to the page markup as the canonical URL. So Google picks it up.

If you try to redirect this domain using nginx config, it breaks the Health Check and the CDN.

I have multiple custom domains set up on the App and also the CUSTOM_DOMAIN attribute set in the App Configuration. I set the CUSTOM_DOMAIN after I found this problem.

Question is - where is Yoast getting the <sitename>.azurewebsites.net domain from and how do we prevent that? Otherwise, eventually, every Wordpress site on App Service will have this URL showing up in Google because 99% of sites use this plugin.

ajkuma 28,036 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-23T12:51:26.01+00:00

To better assist you on this, could you please share more details about your scenario/issue? If feasible, share any screenshot of the issue after concealing any private details.
massad 65 Reputation points

2023-10-23T13:10:25.1733333+00:00

My post didn’t save for some reason. Maybe because of markup in the post? Anyway I updated it.
massad 65 Reputation points

2023-10-23T13:15:03.5766667+00:00

OMG. I just rewrote the whole thing again and it didn't save :(

1 answer

Your answer

ajkuma 28,036 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-23T12:51:26.01+00:00

To better assist you on this, could you please share more details about your scenario/issue? If feasible, share any screenshot of the issue after concealing any private details.
massad 65 Reputation points

2023-10-23T13:10:25.1733333+00:00

My post didn’t save for some reason. Maybe because of markup in the post? Anyway I updated it.
massad 65 Reputation points

2023-10-23T13:15:03.5766667+00:00

OMG. I just rewrote the whole thing again and it didn't save :(

Answer 1

ajkuma 28,036 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Thanks for the follow-up and updating the question. Apologies for any issues that you may have encountered while submitting the question.

If my understanding of your scenario description is correct, you are having an issue with the Yoast plugin and the default .azurewebsites.net domain being saved in its database tables. Typically, you will update and configure the plugin in a similar way as you would host a WordPress site on-prem.

Based on your requirement, you may consider to manually update the URLs in the Yoast plugin to your custom domain URLs. This could possibly prevent the default .azurewebsites.net domain from being added to the page markup as the canonical URL.

If you are looking to disable the default WebApp URL assigned to the Azure WebApp.

You may add a 301 redirect rule on WordPress.

Create Nginx redirect rule, as outlined in this discussion thread.

Ref: Map an existing custom DNS name to Azure App Service

Kindly let us know with more info about the issue.

massad 65 Reputation points

2023-10-24T18:18:48.3+00:00
Thanks for the response. I have indeed updated the Yoast tables (wp_yoast_indexable) to have the custom domain and so far they have stayed that way (around 3 days now).

Regarding the 301 redirects, I did that and it works, but it's tricky because the conf gets reset whenever the app starts. You have to create a myconfig.conf file in /home/site/ and then use the /home/dev/startup.sh to copy the myconfig.conf to /etc/nginx/conf.d and reset nginx (nginx -s reload). However, it also broke two things:

Health Check - The App uses this azurewebsites.net domain for the end point - work around was to make an exception for the $uri that contains the end point and return 200

CDN - since adding the 301 redirect for the azurewebsites.net domain to point to my root domain, the CDN end point URL also started redirecting to my root domain. This basically nullifies the CDN because the URLs are resolving to the origin. It worked ok for a bit, but then I started getting conflicts with CSS and Javascript files. These resolved when I disabled the W3 Total Cache plugin (which was set up with Azure App defaults). Once I removed the 301 redirect of azurewebsites.net domain to my root domain in the nginx config, the CDN went back to normal

So if you can explain how I can fix #2, I'm fine with the workaround in #1

Thanks!
ajkuma 28,036 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-26T06:01:01.5633333+00:00

Apologies for the delayed response. Thanks for the additional details.

Based on your requirement/scenario, you may leverage only workaround #1. Please let me know if you have further questions.

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How do I stop Yoast plugin from saving <sitename>.azurewebsites.net URLs as canonical

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