Understanding SEO Variables

Link: https://support.brilliantdirectories.com/support/solutions/articles/12000022881-understanding-seo-variables


SEO Variable names are variables that appear between percent signs (%) and are pre-processed before being outputted to the web page. Brilliant Directories offers several ways of customizing how they will look on the page:


Single Percent Sign (eg: %website_name%)


As an example the website_name variable with the value brilliant directories website (Notice that all letters are lower case)


If it uses a single percent sign like this:



It will be displayed on the homepage as the following:


In this example, notice that all letters are lower case.



Single Percent Sign + First Capital Letter (eg: %Website_name%)


If a single percent sign it's use with the first letter of the variable capitalized like this:



It would look like this:


Notice that the first letter for all words is now capitalized.



Double Percent Sign (eg: %%website_name%%)


If a double percent sign it's use like this:



It will show like this:



Notice that the words are now plural




Double Percent Sign + First Capital Letter (eg: %%Website_name%%)


If a double percent sign  it's use with the first letter of the variable capitalized like this:




It will be reflected like this:


Triple Percent Sign


Lastly there is the triple percent sign, which just means that any value stored in the SEO variable will be printed EXACTLY like it is. Capital letters will remain capital letters, lower case will remain lower case and so on.


Notice that all words are capitalized and plural. This variables can be found in the Text Labels section of the Back-end Admin. Simply go to Settings >> Text Labels and their Variable Name in the variable option will become available.




PostFix Variable Parameters

With the mentioned information above, it is possible to also extend the functionality of the distinct SEO variable formats by postfixing them with the following variable parameters:

The methods can be used when calling any "%variable_name%" in the system. The way to call a method is the following: %variable~method%. All the regular functionality of the variables like double or triple "%" signs is still available when using methods.


~ao - It is meant for admins and when used with an SEO variable it will pre-process the variable in the frontend but not for admins. To use it change the variable from %variable% to %variable~ao% (~ao is postfixed to it)

~as - It is used to add the apostrophe for the possession of nouns. So by using %variable~as% you would change a value of women to women's

~na - It is used to show the variable in plain text (not pre-processed). So using %variable~na% will show %variable% instead of the actual value.

~ut - It is used for special cases where we use URL like text (eg: Slashes). When we use %variable~ut%, it will still pre-process the variable, but in addition to this, it will also remove any special characters for the URL format.



Special Note regarding Variable Names

With the following information about SEO variables set, there is another point that needs to be made regarding SEO variable names. It is recommended to avoid naming a SEO variable name the same as a column on the database. For example, the following is a list of columns names found in the database that should not be used as SEO variable names:

type, old_filename, new_filename, updated_by, name, icon, keywords, order, group_name, database, first_name, last_name, email, company, phone_number, fax_number, address1, address2, zip_code, zip, state_code, country_code, state_ln, country_ln, website, twitter, facebook, linkedin, blog, active, token, position, profession, additional, link, link_order, user_id, comments, data_name, data_type, form, form_name, search_results, h1, h2, post_type, widget, widget_name, status, title, section, filename, quote, experience, affiliation, awards, published, education, softwares, fees, about_me, featured, testimonial, preferred, work_experience, rep_matters, speaking_engagements, current_position, additional_fields, lat, lon, post_title, post_caption, post_category, post_image, post_price, post_tags, group_category, property_status, property_type, property_beds, property_baths, property_price

This is because they will have a conflict between each other.