PBJ SEO Changelog (v3.0.0): The Admin Dashboard Arrives

PBJ SEO is our lightweight, first-party SEO plugin — a single-file replacement for heavyweight suites like Yoast or Rank Math. It outputs document titles, meta descriptions, canonical URLs, robots directives, Open Graph and Twitter Card tags, JSON-LD structured data, and sitemap <lastmod> dates, all with zero third-party dependencies. Here’s what has shipped in every version.

Version 3.0.0 — the admin dashboard

Our biggest PBJ SEO release yet, and a deliberate reversal of the plugin’s original “one small file, no dashboard” design. PBJ SEO now has a full settings screen at Settings → PBJ SEO with four tabs:

• Checklist. A page-by-page SEO audit — every published page and post is scanned for a missing meta description, an over-long or too-short title, no featured image for social sharing, a noindex flag, or thin content — with an Edit button on each. Alongside it, a site-wide checklist covers permalinks, search-engine visibility, tagline, HTTPS, logo/icon, the front-page share image, and the XML sitemap, plus a functional check that PBJ SEO’s own output is actually running and a warning if a second SEO plugin is fighting it.
• Options. Every feature — force-HTTPS, security headers, LiteSpeed edge caching, geo meta, legacy redirects, custom redirects, 404 logging, attachment redirects, feed noindex, head cleanup, and performance tweaks — is now an on/off switch with a plain-English explanation. Everything defaults on, so upgrading changes nothing until you decide it should.
• Robots & Sitemaps. See your sitemap URL and status, preview the effective robots.txt, and add your own robots rules — saved and served automatically.
• 404s & Redirects. A lightweight logger records the URLs visitors hit that don’t exist, with hit counts and referrers, and one click turns any of them into a redirect. A full 301/302 redirect manager replaces the old code-only map.

Version 2.0.0

• Merged PBJ Site Essentials. Security headers, legacy and duplicate-slug 301 redirects, geo meta tags, Service/FAQPage/LocalBusiness schema, meta URL absolutizing, performance tweaks, and the 2026 shortcode now live inside PBJ SEO; the standalone Site Essentials plugin is retired (and while it’s still active, the merged module stands down — no double output). Service/FAQ/LocalBusiness schema now ride in the main JSON-LD graph instead of separate script tags, with new pbj_seo_service_schema_map and pbj_seo_redirect_map filters.
• New: block editor “PBJ SEO” sidebar. Per-post SEO title, meta description, and noindex fields (previously only settable via WP-CLI), plus a live SEO best-practices checklist with click-to-fix actions, a site-wide checklist, and a pre-publish review panel.
• New output: attachment pages 301 to their parent post, feeds send X-Robots-Tag: noindex, follow, robots.txt gains a Sitemap: line, article published/modified-time Open Graph tags, og:image width/height/alt and twitter:image:alt, and shortlink/RSD head links are removed.
• Changed: force-HTTPS is now on by default (was opt-in). Same safety rails — it only ever redirects when the home URL itself is HTTPS.
• Fixed: LiteSpeed edge-cache headers moved to template_redirect — previously they fired before the main query, so search/404/preview pages could be cached as public.

Version 1.4.0

• LiteSpeed edge caching. Anonymous front-end pages now send X-LiteSpeed-Cache-Control: public (6-hour TTL, adjustable via the pbj_seo_cache_ttl filter) so LiteSpeed servers full-page-cache them with no separate cache plugin. Personalized requests — logged-in users, cart/checkout, comment cookies, search, 404s, previews, feeds — are marked no-cache, with a pbj_seo_cacheable filter for site-specific rules. Content changes send a full-site purge. Both headers are ignored on non-LiteSpeed servers, so there’s zero behavior change elsewhere.

Version 1.3.1

• The posts page (blog index) now honors its own meta description and featured image for the description and og:image, instead of always falling back to the site tagline and default image.

Version 1.3.0

• Added an opt-in force-HTTPS redirect (PBJ_SEO_FORCE_HTTPS constant or pbj_seo_force_https filter). 301s to the canonical HTTPS home host and collapses www in the same hop; no-op when the home URL isn’t HTTPS, under WP-CLI/cron, or behind a TLS-terminating proxy.

Version 1.2.0

• Added an Article JSON-LD node (headline, dates, author, publisher) on posts, with pbj_seo_is_article, pbj_seo_article_type, and pbj_seo_article_author filters.
• Added the pbj_seo_schema_graph filter so themes can append site-specific schema nodes, and pbj_seo_default_image for a site-wide fallback share image.
• Added <lastmod> to core XML sitemap entries and removed the WordPress version meta generator tag.

Version 1.1.0

• Added a per-post custom title override via the _pbj_seo_title post meta (front page or any singular page).

Version 1.0.0

• Initial release. Replaced Rank Math with first-party titles, meta descriptions, canonicals, robots directives, Open Graph/Twitter Cards, Organization/WebSite/WebPage/BreadcrumbList/Product schema, and image alt-text fallbacks.