Wordpress-seo: Yoast SEO configuration wizard doesn't work

[boosterdigital]

I try to set Yoast SEO configuration, but in 1° step (welcome), I already see and I'm not able to follow up:

"A problem occurred when saving the current step, please file a bug report describing what step you are on and which changes you want to make (if any)."

How can I solve this problem?

[oliverdrummond]

Same thing happens with me. My steps:

1- Enter the configuration Wizard;
2- Click "Next" on the first step;
3- The error message shows on the top of the page.

I'm sending a video of the error.
Yoast Error.zip

I'm using WordPress 4.6.1 and Yoast SEO Version 3.7.1.

Related to #5928, #5907, #5889, #5892, #5754

[boosterdigital]

Exactly the same process for me. How can we solve it? Have u information about it yet?

thanks,
M.

[davincenzo]

I'm having the same problem, however my configure page is blank and just gives me a link back to Yoast Dashboard. I've tried deactivating all plugins to no effect? It would be great to get a solution?

[terw-dan]

@boosterdigital @davincenzo @oliverdrummond Please provide any errors found in the JavaScript console, this will help us solving this issue.

[boosterdigital]

Thanks, but where can we find any errors in Javascript Console in Wp?

[oliverdrummond]

Hello @boosterdigital, I can't see any errors in my Google Chrome Developer Tools Console, even after the error message is shown inside the webpage.

[boosterdigital]

The problem is always the same. I'd simply to know how to solve and to know what kind of problem I will have if I don't complete the 10 steps.

[davincenzo]

This happens after I press the configure link ...

[davincenzo]

I just checked for error also ...

[boosterdigital]

Keep calm. Here, can't anyone of YOAST TEAM answer to us? What's this forum?

[terw-dan]

@davincenzo do you see that error on the page load? or after you've clicked the next button?

[davincenzo]

Yes on page load. when i click here ..

[davincenzo]

any suggestions?

[terw-dan]

For now I would suggest setting up the YoastSEO manually.
This can be done by going to SEO -> Dashboard -> features -> enable advanced features. The wizard guides you through all these settings, but they can all be found here.

If you have any more error messages in the console, please provide them so we can fix this issue.
@boosterdigital @davincenzo @oliverdrummond can you also check the network tab in the same console to see if you have any requests with statuscodes other than 200.

[oliverdrummond]

Thank you @terw-dan, I will try the manual configuration.

Regarding the error messages in console:

1- When I load the first Wizard Page, this is what I get:

2- When I click "next", nothing happens on the console, again:

[davincenzo]

I tried that but I get the same situation. Errors the same as what was posted by me above. Very strange? I have yoast running no hassles on other platforms. I've tried removing yoast and installing it again to no avail ....

[terw-dan]

@oliverdrummond thanks for the feedback. Can you send me a mail on danny [at] yoast.com? It would be great if you can help us this way to figure out what goes wrong. And this will be a bit easier via mail than over github.

[boosterdigital]

How can we do to solve the problem? And this, which kind of issue might cause to me?

Thanks

[terw-dan]

@boosterdigital This issue seems to be caused by an error on the server when saving a step. Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce this yet, so I don't have a solution yet, but we are working on it to fix it as soon as possible.
If you have any additional information it is most welcome, but I think most of it is already posted in this issue.

[terw-dan]

@boosterdigital @oliverdrummond @davincenzo What browser(s) are you using? And which operating system.

[oliverdrummond]

Hello @terw-dan ,

I'm using Chrome ( 54.0.2840.71 (64-bit)) , but have also tried on Vivaldi (1.4.589.38 (Stable channel) (64-bit)), Safari (Version 10.0 (12602.1.50.0.10)) and Firefox 49.0.2. All of those on Mac OS Sierra.

[boosterdigital]

I've solved the problem. Yoast team answered me. I've no the license pro of yoast. Anyway, I want to ask you more. When I'm in editor snippet (backend), on the right side I see "SEO: not available". The reason why?

[terw-dan]

For better error reporting this issue should be picked up: https://github.com/Yoast/yoast-components/issues/105

[mike-rogers]

@terw-dan - I have the exact same error as @davincenzo. If you'd like some server configuration information (or what steps I took to get to this state) please let me know.

[davincenzo]

Thanks for that bro, that would great. Problem is that my host doesn't
really allow for that muck config but any info would be good. Cheers

On Saturday, October 29, 2016, Mike Rogers [email protected] wrote:

@terw-dan https://github.com/terw-dan - I have the exact same error as
@davincenzo https://github.com/davincenzo. If you'd like some server
configuration information (or what steps I took to get to this state)
please let me know.

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[oliverdrummond]

Hello @terw-dan , any news about this bug? Thanks a lot!

[terw-dan]

@mike-rogers Any information on the server would be most welcome as it will help figuring out where the error comes from. Unfortunately we haven't been able to reproduce this yet and the error seems to be limited to some server configurations.

[togah123]

Experiencing the same issue, cant get past step nr 1. No error messages in console at all?

Site is running on wpengine server. asked their support for error logs, but did not find anything either.

Latest wp install, latest genesis framework, running polylang pro

[RuneEll]

Same issue here. Screen goes blank, or grey and has the return to... text on the top of the page.

Managed server.

Windows 7 ultimate, 64 bits OS at home.
What information from the server do you need?
Thanks

[Pcosta88]

Please inform the customer of conversation # 158694 when this conversation has been closed.

[RobbAa]

Like many others, I also get the blank (light grey) page, with “Go back to the Yoast SEO dashboard” on the top and nothing else.

My server specs are:

Operating System: WINNT
PHP Version: 5.2.10
Server Software: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
MySQL: 5.0.37-community-nt-log
PHP Safe Mode: No
PHP Allow URL Fopen: Yes
PHP Memory Limit: 256M
PHP Max Post Size: 50M
PHP Max Upload Filesize: 50M
PHP Max Script Execute Time: 256
PHP EXIF Support: No
PHP EXIF Version:
PHP XML Support: Yes
PHP CURL Support: Yes

Cheers,

[antoine2711]

I have the same problem ! Love to know if it gets fix.

Regards,
Antoine

[davincenzo]

This is crazy that so many have this issue and it seemingly goes on deaf
ears.

On Wednesday, November 16, 2016, Antoine Beaubien [email protected]
wrote:

I have the same problem ! Love to know if it gets fix.

Regards,
Antoine

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[terw-dan]

@RobbAa Do you have any errors in your JavaScript console?
It might be the empty screens are a seperate issue then not be able to complete the first step.

[RobbAa]

@terw-dan I get two errors (not sure in which order):

1) "Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found)", trying to load [domain root]/wp-json/yoast/v1/configurator (which folder structure doesn't exist).

2) "TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'Object.keys(c.props.steps)')" / "keys — configuration-wizard-380.min.js:40:24616"

Does that help?

[novakin]

Same problem for me.

No 404 or javascript error tho

Server Specs:
Debian 8
Last version of WP running
NGinx
PHP7
Percona server

Edit : I have two sites on the same server;, working for one site and not for the other :/

Edit2 : Found out that deactivating polylang plugin was solving the issue

[terw-dan]

@novakin Thanks for your feedback. I can reproduce this issue with the polylang plugin installed in my test setup.

[terw-dan]

@afercia and I figured out some plugins load scripts on the admin page that are also loaded in the onboarding wizard. These scripts seem to generate errors, in case of polylang it is an ajaxurl variable that is undefined. There was no error thrown in the console, but with the developer tool open it opened the debugger.

This is probably the case with other plugins as well that load scripts on the admin page.

[afercia]

@terw-dan yep investigated a bit on this too, no errors in the console I guess thanks to some React or other packages "feature". To actually _see_ the error I had to do this:

Not sure we can blame Polylang since ajaxurl is assumed to be available in all the admin pages. By the way, using do_action( 'admin_print_footer_scripts' ) in WPSEO_Configuration_Page->show_wizard will print _any_ scripts and data queued for the footer, including the ones queued by other plugins, and this is probably not what we want.

[Arvoreen]

I ran into the same problem as others reported here. It turns out, I had left "display_errors = On' in my php.ini file, and that caused the setup process to fail. The returned JSON from the Ajax call had various warning/deprecation errors included. Disabling "display_errors" fixed my issue

[r4cker]

Got the same. Grey page with "go back to adshboard"

[stodorovic]

I was checking few websites. I found that I can add ajaxurl in javascript and wizard works with activated Polylang. So a possible fix (I'm not sure is it the best way):
https://github.com/stodorovic/wordpress-seo/blob/issues/stodorovic/ajax-confwiz/admin/config-ui/class-configuration-page.php#L105

Second, I found that some security plugins or custom code remove action or add filter which disable REST API. I think that you can add simple check in the code:

if (  (has_action( 'init', 'rest_api_init' ) === false) || ( apply_filters( 'rest_enabled', true ) === false ) ) ) {
        // REST API is disabled
}

I tried to create simple checker (which checks response) in Configuration wizard. I'll send code later.

[fan1430]

I have this same problem as well. I'm also using the Polylang plugin. Is that why I can't use the Yoast configuring wizard? Has this been fixed yet?

[novakin]

Yes. It was the case for me. I'm not sure Yoast has been updated yet.

Just disable polylang before using the configuration wizard or use the
advanced configuration options
Le lun. 28 nov. 2016 à 19:19, fan1430 [e-mail] a écrit :

I have this same problem as well. I'm also using the Polylang plugin. Is
that why I can't use the Yoast configuring wizard? Has then been fixed yet?

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[stodorovic]

@novakin @fan1430 As temporary fix you can add a line in admin/config-ui/class-configuration-page.php or replace entire file with https://github.com/stodorovic/wordpress-seo/blob/issues/stodorovic/ajax-confwiz/admin/config-ui/class-configuration-page.php#L105 It works in my case.

[RobbAa]

Before this all gets blamed on the Polylang, can I just mention that I don't have that plugin, so it can't be the only thing behind this problem. Just saying... :)

[stodorovic]

Issue is in Yoast SEO - Configuration Wizard includes footer scripts, but it doesn't use load-scripts which adds var ajaxurl = ... You can see in my previous post, if I add it into Yoast, then configuration wizard works. It isn't conflict only with Polylang, I found other plugin with same behavior.

You can see in previous posts, that we don't blame Polylang.
https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/5928#issuecomment-262959126

_Not sure we can blame Polylang since ajaxurl is assumed to be available in all the admin pages. ..._

[Pcosta88]

Please inform the customer of conversation # 161770 when this conversation has been closed.

[Pcosta88]

Above user experiences issues with polylang 2.0.9 that result in the Wizard Screen not displaying as expected

[r4cker]

I disabled Polylang and it's working again.

[SKADI-Web]

Same issue here, the config wizard only show me a blank screen with a "return to dashboard" link.
I do not use Polylang, but here is a list of my plugins :
_Better Font Awesome, Contact Form 7, Cryout Serious Theme Settings, Hide Admin Bar, HTML Editor Syntax Highlighter, Page scroll to id, Preserved HTML Editor Markup Plus, Sticky Menu (or Anything!) on Scroll, TinyMCE Advanced, WordPress Twitter Bootstrap CSS, WP Add Custom CSS and Yoast SEO of course._

I did the last update, but it did not change this issue.

Hope it helps !

[stodorovic]

@SKADI-Web
I just checked your example and it seems that REST API are disabled on your website.

$ curl -A Mozilla http://xxxxx.fr/wp-json/
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>404 Not Found</title>
....
</html>

I don't see any security plugin in your list, but it can be done with following code:

remove_action( 'init', 'rest_api_init' );
or
add_filter('rest_enabled', '__return_false');

I can reproduce same error if I remove REST API.

[stodorovic]

@SKADI-Web

I just found that REST API works if I'm using index permalinks:

$ curl -A Mozilla http://xxxxx.fr/index.php/wp-json/yoast/v1/configurator
{"code":"rest_forbidden","message":"D\u00e9sol\u00e9, vous n\u2019avez pas l\u2019autorisation de faire cela.","data":{"status":403}}

Can you send more into about permalink settings?

[SKADI-Web]

Mmm, from the WP UI, I have http://skadi-web.fr/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

[stodorovic]

Yes, it can be issue. And it seems that you don't have properly .htaccess file. I think that you can fix it if you upload .htaccess file in public_html ( https://codex.wordpress.org/htaccess )

Example

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

But it's possible bug related to REST API. I see in html code:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="SKADI &raquo; Flux" href="http://xxxxx.fr/index.php/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="SKADI &raquo; Flux des commentaires" href="http://xxxxx.fr/index.php/comments/feed/" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="SKADI &raquo; Présentation Flux descommentaires" href="http://xxxxx.fr/index.php/presentation/feed/" />
....
<link rel='https://api.w.org/' href='http://xxxxx.fr/wp-json/' />
....
<link rel="alternate" type="application/json+oembed" href="http://xxxxx.fr/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxxxxx.fr%2F" />
<link rel="alternate" type="text/xml+oembed" href="http://xxxxx.fr/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fxxxxx.fr%2F&#038;format=xml" />

[SKADI-Web]

Okay, I just added the .htaccess with the content from your link, and it is working, thanks a lot, I really did not think about this !
Could be nice to add some info about this for noobs like me, writing the .htaccess file was at the bottom of my priority list.

[stodorovic]

Related to permalinks - https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks Maybe it can help

@SKADI-Web My advice is to you remove index.php from permalinks (because you have .htaccess file now). You can select some of predefined permalinks - /%postname% Then you can create SEO friendly URLs

[stodorovic]

@Rarst @terw-dan @afercia I checked all possible cases from here and I checked all websites where I've access. So, there are:

• 404 errors - possible issue related to permalinks. I created new issue to avoid confusing here #6182
• broken JSON response - Example for supercache #6183 (more details there) or #6025 (first post)
• security rules:
  remove_action( 'init', 'rest_api_init' );
  or
  add_filter('json_enabled', '__return_false');
  or
  some server side rules
• Javascript errors:
  missing ajaxurl
• Ugly output from Query Monitor (bellow wizard), but wizard works

It's my summary, I checked a lot of plugins, websites, etc

[terw-dan]

@stodorovic Thanks for your feedback, this will help us testing the fix we are working on.

[oliverdrummond]

I've just tested disabling Polylang and it also worked for me!

[Pcosta88]

Please inform the customer of conversation # 163491 when this conversation has been closed.

[Pcosta88]

above user is experiencing the follow JavaScript error

Uncaught TypeError: cannot convert undefined or null to object() configuration-wizard-380.min.js?=3.9:40

[Pcosta88]

Some users may experience the issue if they are using WP Minify as it combines and compresses JS and CSS files to improve page load time.

[crzzano]

I just want to point out that I had the "Uncaught TypeError: cannot convert undefined or null to object()" error (but no 403 errors or anything like that). To fix it I disabled the Timber plugin, then reenabled it after I was done. So it seems that there is some incompatability beween the Yoast configuration process and the Timber plugin.

[terw-dan]

@twocatszerokarma Thanks for your comment. We will be testing with this plugin as well when improving the compatibility.

[cosmocanuck]

FYI, I got this problem just as I was doing final settings tweaks to my site, and one of those was to set things up so that /clientsite.com redirected to /clientsite.com/wordpress (where the new site lives). I followed standard procedure: duplicating .htaccess and index.php from the /wordpress directory into the main directory, and changing the Site Address (in the WP Dashboard --> Settings -> General from www.clientsite.com/wordpress to www.clientsite.com.

I'd started doing the Yoast setup, but then saw the wrong ("/wordpress") address listed there, so I went back and fixed that... and then I never saw the Yoast wizard again.

Seems to be something to do with where Yoast thinks the site lives.

How to fix, though, I still don't know. It's manual setup for me!

Oh, and my JS errors are only two, the relevant one seems to be this one:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 (Forbidden)
http://hons.ca/wp-json/yoast/v1/configurator

[sergeirichard]

I also get the "A problem occurred when saving the current step..." message, as soon as I press the button to start the configuration wizard. So it never goes beyond step one.

I've tried disabling every other plugin, and using a default theme (2015). I've also tried a range of clients so the issue presumably has something to do with the server. Details:

cPanel Version 64.0 (build 18)
Apache Version 2.4.25
PHP Version 5.4.45
MySQL Version 5.5.54-cll-lve
Architecture x86_64
Operating System linux
Shared IP Address 91.210.232.80
Path to Sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail
Path to Perl /usr/bin/perl
Perl Version 5.8.8
Kernel Version 2.6.32-673.8.1.lve1.4.3.el6.x86_64

And in case it's any help, here's server service information:

patchman up
cpanellogd up
cxswatch up
mysql (5.5.54-cll-lve) up
varnish up
exim-26 up
imap up
sshd up
lmtp up
clamd up
httpd (2.4.25 (Unix)) up
queueprocd up
spamd up
rsyslogd up
ftpd up
cpanel_php_fpm up
dnsadmin up
cpdavd up
cpanel-dovecot-solr up
exim (exim-4.89-1.cp1162.x86_64) up
cpgreylistd up
cpsrvd up
lfd up
nscd up
Server Load 3.12 (6 cpus)
Memory Used 54.11 %
Swap 4.80 %
Disk / (/) 58 %
Disk /tmp (/tmp) 23 %
Disk /home (/home) 47 %
Disk /home2 (/home2) 33 %
Disk /home3 (/home3) 77 %
Disk /var/tmp (/var/tmp) 23 %
Disk /media/psf (/media/psf) 0 %
Disk /var/lib/mysql (/var/lib/mysql) 53 %

[dinaandstacy]

Same goes for me here. Blank page. I just did this on another site, so I'm curious as to why it wouldn't work on this other site. Different hosts, same computer, browser, etc.