SEO checklist does not check already completed items correctly

Thanks for the thorough review. This will help with 📌 Review checklist items for relevance Active . Postponing on that.

Thanks for linking the issue @thejimbirch! I am even more concerned now that I see that it was created and there is no progress towards a fix from August (not blaming anyone).

Given this and reasons mentioned above, I think we should not postpone this issue, instead we should remove the module from the Drupal CMS 1.0.0, unless it will be fixed very soon (or unless other measures will be taken to avoid confusion).

I think it will be much worse, if we keep the module in the current shape included and marketers will start searching and changing the site configuration for no reason, just because of the incorrect reports. Removing the module temporarily seems like a better solution to me, in this situation.

So let's remove the postponed status, if possible. What do you think? Thanks!

The only item on the list that's not preconfigured by Drupal CMS that I can see is an https connection, and that's standard both on ddev and any hosting environment these days, so would be correct in the vast majority of cases already (not the case ten years ago so it probably made sense when it was added).

So I don't really see that there's any benefit to the module even if all the items were checked - then it's just telling you that you don't need to do things you don't need to do?

@catch There are some other items in the module's checklist. I put to the IS only these which are confusing or not working (sorry if it was not clear from my first post).

@poker10 ah sorry yes that wasn't obvious to me but probably would be obvious to someone who's used SEO checklist more than zero times.

Either way installing an extra xmlsitemap module or advagg could hose someone's site in some circumstances (although advagg will probably never have an 12.x release) so agree that bad advice is worse than no advice.

Bumping to major.

I made a first pass at updating the checklist items. 📌 Review checklist items for relevance Active Would love feedback.

The seo_checklist module checks if a module is enabled, and pre-checks those items for the user.

It does not check for configuration settings, or things like if you are on HTTPS or not. In those instances, I aimed to rewrite the descriptions as Verify or review the settings. Just because something is preconfigured doesn't mean it should be hidden. I believe anyone interested in optimizing their website should learn to understand where and how to configure their site.

I only became a maintainer of the seo_checklist module over the summer and removed broken links, removed cruft, and made a release for Drupal 11. I created the issue to update the items and a few more, but my contribution and personal volunteer time have been occupied by Drupal CMS. I believe we can get the module to a state for the release where it will be useful for Drupal CMS users.

In the future, the Checklist API module has a long term goal of converting Checklists into entities. 🌱 Create a new architecture for checklists as config entities, with tasks fulfilled by conditions Active . Once that happens, the SEO Checklist will need to be rewritten, and at that time we would be able to check off any checklist item from a recipe's config actions. Phenaproxima is the driving force behind that, My hopes is that he will be able to find time for that again in the new year.

@thejimbirch I haven't looked at how the form works but is it an option for us to default items to 'on' if we've configured them by default? Not sure how the state for this stuff is stored, sorry if that's a stupid question.

I agree that switching on the items, which Drupal CMS preconfigures, will be the best, if possible. And/or maybe update descriptions on items, which cannot be checked by the module, to clearly state that - so that a user is aware, that the specific item is off, but it has not been automatically checked (so it can be already done).

Taking a look through the issue and the current state of the recipe in Drupal CMS here is what I think we should aim to change to reduce confusion and improve the user experience:

## General: Fix the issue with items not being automatically checked for items that are handled by the SEO Recipes and/or Core.
Configure XML Sitemap
Setup Cron
Enable Clean URLs
Configure Easy Breadcrumbs
Configure Honeypot
Adjust Performance Settings
Configure Image Styles

We should be able to check the things that the SEO recipe configures, but we won’t have much control over the other ones and we don’t want to make this a dependency for them so some of this will need to be on the users to handle manually which I think is fine.

Additional recommendations to further improve the UX/clean up some legacy items:

## Search Engines
Simple Sitemap and XML Sitemap are both heavily used modules. There are use cases for both - but for Drupal CMS Simple Sitemap makes more sense. It likely makes sense from an SEO Checklist perspective to support both.
Install and Enable XML Sitemap Module should be reworded to reference/link to both.
This could be turned into a smart option checking if either module is installed and wording appropriately.
Configure XML Sitemap module should be contextual based on which module is installed.
Set Up Cron - Add a link to Drupal’s Cron page w/ a longer description that we recommend this be set up on your hosting environment for more complex sites?
Group the Google and Microsoft account information together.

## Optimizing Content
On the optimizing content section - adding a 2nd sitemap is going to be confusing for new users. Recommend
Move search 404 to Clean URLs section
Consider consolidating Optimizing Content and On-page Optimization.

## On-Page optimization
Consider removing the Yoast SEO setup if the module is having issues until they are resolved - not urgent but could be a poor user experience.
Consider adding sections around accessibility with https://www.drupal.org/project/editoria11y → . Accessibility does have an impact on SEO and is included with Drupal CMS.

## Security and Performance
Remove advagg related checklist items
Reword "Secure your website with https" to "Confirm your site is served over HTTPS"
Remove Move to fast hosting.

## Mobile and Social
Change “Make sure website is responsive.” to “Confirm your website loads responsively on mobile and tablet devices”