appsettings.json¶

Site-wide SEOChecker settings live in the SEOChecker section of appsettings.json. Only add the settings you want to change.

Example¶

The example below shows the most used settings with their default values.

appsettings.json

{
  "SEOChecker": {
    "CacheTimeOutInMinutes": 60,
    "UmbracoApplicationUrl": "",
    "ForceHttps": false,
    "Triggers": {
      "TriggerOnPublish": true
    },
    "UrlRewrite": {
      "EnableUrlRewriting": true,
      "ForcewwwUrls": "Ignore",
      "UseTrailingslash": "Ignore"
    },
    "RedirectConfig": {
      "Enabled": true,
      "EnableUrlHistoryTracking": true,
      "EnableRedirectStats": false,
      "StoreDomain": false,
      "StoreQueryString": false,
      "ForwardQuerystring": false,
      "RedirectWhenNodeExists": false
    },
    "XmlSiteMap": {
      "Enabled": true,
      "ExcludeUmbracoNaviHide": true
    },
    "RobotsTxt": {
      "Enabled": true
    },
    "SocialSettings": {
      "FaceBookEnabled": false,
      "InstagramEnabled": false,
      "LinkedInEnabled": false,
      "TwitterEnabled": false
    },
    "ValidationConfig": {
      "ValidateAltAttributesOnTemplate": false,
      "MetaDescriptionMinLength": 50,
      "MetaDescriptionMaxLength": 160
    },
    "PurgeSettings": {
      "Enabled": true,
      "DaysToKeepBrokenLinks": 7,
      "MaxBrokenLinksToPurge": 50
    }
  }
}

UrlRewrite¶

The URL rewrite module redirects all variants of a URL to one canonical URL.

Setting	Default	Description
`EnableUrlRewriting`	`true`	Turns the URL rewrite module on or off.
`ForcewwwUrls`	`Ignore`	`True` always uses the `www.` prefix, `False` never uses it, `Ignore` leaves it as requested.
`UseTrailingslash`	`Ignore`	`True` always adds a trailing slash, `False` always removes it, `Ignore` leaves it as requested.

These requests are redirected to the canonical URL:

Situation	Requested URL	Redirected to
Site uses the `www.` prefix	`http://mysite.com/`	`http://www.mysite.com/`
Site doesn't use the `www.` prefix	`http://www.mysite.com/`	`http://mysite.com/`
Site doesn't use a trailing slash	`http://mysite.com/contact/`	`http://mysite.com/contact`
Request for the home page node	`http://mysite.com/home/`	`http://mysite.com/`
URL contains uppercase characters	`http://mysite.com/CONTACT/`	`http://mysite.com/contact/`

Warning

Keep URL rewriting on, unless you already handle URL rewriting another way, for example with IIS URL Rewrite.

To add your own rewrite rules, see Extend SEOChecker.

RedirectConfig¶

Setting	Default	Description
`Enabled`	`true`	Turns the redirect module on or off.
`EnableUrlHistoryTracking`	`true`	Creates a redirect automatically when the URL of a page changes.
`EnableRedirectStats`	`false`	Keeps track of how often and when each redirect is used.
`StoreDomain`	`false`	Stores the domain of not found URLs, so you can redirect the same path on different domains to different pages.
`StoreQueryString`	`false`	Stores the query string of not found URLs, so you can redirect `page.php?id=4` and `page.php?id=5` to different pages.
`ForwardQuerystring`	`false`	Passes the query string on to the page you redirect to.
`RedirectWhenNodeExists`	`false`	Always redirects to the configured page, even when the original page still exists.

XmlSiteMap¶

Setting	Default	Description
`Enabled`	`true`	Serves an XML sitemap at `/sitemap.xml`.
`ExcludeUmbracoNaviHide`	`true`	Leaves out pages where `umbracoNaviHide` is `true`.

On a multilingual site there is a sitemap per language. The sitemap index is at /sitemapindex.xml.

Set sitemap options per Document Type in the Document Type settings, or per page with the special properties.

RobotsTxt¶

Setting	Default	Description
`Enabled`	`true`	Serves a dynamic `robots.txt`.

When the XML sitemap is on, the location of the sitemap is added to robots.txt. The default content is:

# SEO Checker for Umbraco
Sitemap: {HTTP_SCHEME}://{HTTP_HOST}/{SITEMAP_FILENAME}
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /bin/
Disallow: /umbraco/

The placeholders are replaced with the scheme and domain of the request, and with sitemap.xml or sitemapindex.xml. You can change the content per site in the domain settings. When your site already has a robots.txt file, SEOChecker picks it up automatically.

SocialSettings¶

Setting	Default	Description
`FaceBookEnabled`	`false`	Renders Open Graph tags and `fb:app_id`.
`InstagramEnabled`	`false`	Renders Open Graph tags.
`LinkedInEnabled`	`false`	Renders Open Graph tags.
`TwitterEnabled`	`false`	Renders `twitter:*` tags.

The og:* tags are rendered when at least one of Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn is on.

ValidationConfig¶

Setting	Default	Description
`ValidateAltAttributesOnTemplate`	`false`	Checks `alt` attributes of images in the full HTML of the page, not only in rich text content.
`MetaDescriptionMinLength`	`50`	Minimum length of the meta description.
`MetaDescriptionMaxLength`	`160`	Maximum length of the meta description.

Triggers¶

Setting	Default	Description
`TriggerOnPublish`	`true`	Adds a page to the validation queue when it is published.

PurgeSettings¶

SEOChecker removes broken inbound links that haven't been fixed after a number of days. Purging runs every hour.

Setting	Default	Description
`Enabled`	`true`	Turns purging on or off.
`DaysToKeepBrokenLinks`	`7`	Number of days to keep a broken link.
`MaxBrokenLinksToPurge`	`50`	Maximum number of broken links removed per run. Keep this number low.

Other settings¶

CacheTimeOutInMinutes¶

How long items are cached, in minutes. The default is 60.

DisableCaching¶

Set to true to turn caching off. Only use this when you troubleshoot.

DisableValidationQueueModule¶

Set to true to stop validating pages. Only use this when you troubleshoot.

ShowDomainNameInDomainSettings¶

Set to true to show the domain of each root node in the domain settings.

LogDebugHTML¶

Set to true to save the HTML that SEOChecker validates to umbraco/Data/temp/seochecker/debug/published. Use this when you troubleshoot validation results.

ForceHttps¶

Set to true to always use HTTPS, for example when the site runs behind a proxy.

UmbracoApplicationUrl¶

The scheme and domain SEOChecker uses instead of the ones from the current request, for example https://www.mysite.com. Use this in a load-balanced setup or behind a proxy.

ReservedUrls¶

A comma-separated list of relative paths that the redirect module ignores, for example /clientapi/,/mediafiles.

AuthenticatedValidation¶

To validate protected pages, set AuthenticatedValidation to true and enter the username and password in AuthenticatedValidationUser and AuthenticatedValidationPassword.

UserAgentFilters and UrlFilters¶

Lists of regular expressions. Requests whose user agent matches UserAgentFilters, or whose URL matches UrlFilters, are treated as coming from a bot. SEOChecker comes with a list of common bots and vulnerability scanners.