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Smart Attachment Page Remove

De Peter Raschendorfer

Description

The Smart Attachment Page Remove Plugin allows you to remove Attachment Pages automatically generated by WordPress

Usage

WordPress automatically generates a page for every file you upload to your Media Library. Even if you do not want to use these Pages and never link media files to their Attachment Page these pages exist and can be accessed by their automated generated URL. The Smart Attachment Page Remove Plugin blocks access to Attachment Pages and causes an 404 error (“page not found”).

This ensures that Attachment Pages do not appear in the results of Search Engines unwanted.

Additionally this plugin prevents from comment spam sent via this Attachment Pages because they are no longer accessible.

Settings

Optionally, a status code 410 can be sent instead of status code 404.

HTTP status code 404 indicates that the requested URL could not be found. This is the default code always sent by WordPress when a URL can not be found. HTTP status 404 does not provide any further information why a URL was not found.

HTTP status code 410 on the other hand indicates that the requested URL is no longer available and will not be available again. If your Attachment Pages already have been indexed by search engines, HTTP status 410 informs them to immediately delete those pages from their index. This should speed up removal.

Regardless, in case of Attachment Pages it makes more sense to use HTTP status 410 anyway and it is recommendet to activate this option in any case.

This option is not activated by default only because it is not the usual behavior of WordPress. There are no negative effects in using HTTP 410.

Support

Support Forum

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I spend a lot of my precious spare time to develop and maintain my free WordPress plugins. You don’t need to make a donation. No money, no beer, no coffee. If you like this plugin then please do me a favor and give it a good rating. Thanks.

Plugin Privacy Information

  • This plugin does not set cookies
  • This plugin does not collect or store any data
  • This plugin does not send any data to external servers

Peters’ Plugins Privacy Information Page

ClassicPress

This plugin is compatible with ClassicPress.

More plugins from Peter

FAQ-e

What about SEO?

Requesting a removed Attachment Page results in a 404 error which lets Search Engines know that the page does not exist. If your Attachment Pages already have been indexed by search engines this will cause them to be removed from the search index.

It is generally true that the occurrence of 404 errors has a negative impact on your ranking in search engines. But only if your website contains links to URLs that result in an error 404. As long as you do not link to the Attachment Pages or you remove all those links before activating this plugin there is no negative impact on your SEO.

The same applies to the usage of HTTP status code 410.

Reviews

Simply the best

29 March 2022 1 reply
It returned a 404 error code just like I wanted so that googlebot does not see a single attachment page. I am convinced that from a SEO point of view, this plugin can be VITAL. Previously, Googlebot spotted all attachment pages and spend time crawling them even if there were redirecting to parent pages by my SEO plugin Rank math seo. By default Yoast or Rank math seo redirect attachment pages to parent pages. Googlebot spent precious time crawling my attachment pages. However, Nothing on my website had links to an attachment page. btw, I suspect that a past XML sitemap including these attachment URLs. Anyways, I think it is a really bad idea to redirect them. The attachment page is not an equivalent of its parent page. All SEO plugins got it wrong from this point of view. So for sure, i could have installed Yoast and manually disabled the automated redirection of attachment pages and prevent Yoast to let bots index it. However, the pages are still here. This means that Googlebot will likely spend time crawling these useless pages. That's why this plugin is so important. It returns a proper 404 which will send the best possible signal to Googlebot. I also don't trust SEO plugins. In the past, Yoast changed the settings of attachment pages during an update (Yoast 7.0). I don't know if you heard of it but millions of attachment pages have been indexed because of this update. Since that time, I don't trust SEO plugins anymore. In the past, I had this issue, I redirected attachment pages and my website was penalized by google. By returning a 404 , I avoid any Google penalty. That's why this plugin is vital.

Works as expected

08 April 2021 1 reply
Works as expected, but settings page with custom styles is redundant, imo.
Read all 13 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Smart Attachment Page Remove” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Smart Attachment Page Remove” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Smart Attachment Page Remove” into your language.

Interested in development?

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Changelog

4.0.2 (2022-05-29)

  • just cosmetics
  • Plugin Foundation updated to PPF08
  • removed unneeded leftovers from pre 4.0.0

4.0.1 (2020-08-25)

  • uninstall fix

4.0.0 (2020-08-23)

  • now uses my own Plugin Foundation
  • new UI

3 (2019-01-04)

  • option to send HTTP status 410 instead of HTTP status 404
  • code improvement
  • UI improvements

2 (2018-04-17)

  • minor code- & UI-improvements

1.2 (2017-11-16)

  • faulty display in WP 4.9 fixed

1.1 (2017-06-26)

  • redesigned admin interface
  • code improvement

1.0 (2017-01-12)

  • Initial Release

Mêta

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Supòrto

Issues resolved in last two months:

0 out of 1

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