Using ColdFusion to Generate Meta Keywords and Description For Mura CMS
As with most content management systems, Mura CMS offers users the ability to enter a "summary" and "keywords" for each page (among several other options). The problem is, many users fail to utilize these fields. So I whipped up a couple of simple custom display objects to address this problem.
The meta keyword generator will read the main "content" of the page, parse it and then dynamically create a unique listing of keywords. I also use a custom list of keywords to delete common keywords such as "a, in, the," etc., which can easily be modified. This makes for good SEO (search engine optimization) too since you're actually generating keywords based on the actual contents of the page! Let's save the following file as "[siteid]/includes/display_objects/custom/dspMetaKeywordGenerator.cfm"
<cfsilent>
<!---
Document: dspMetaKeywordGenerator.cfm
Version: 20091023.01
Author: Stephen Withington | www.stephenwithington.com
Purpose: I generate meta keywords based on the body content.
Instructions: Assuming you save this file to:
"[siteid]/includes/display_objects/custom/dspMetaKeywordGenerator.cfm"
Locate your current meta keywords tag and replace with the following code:
<cfif len(trim(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaKeywords()))>
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaKeywords())#" />
<cfelse>
#event.getContentRenderer().dspInclude('display_objects/custom/dspMetaKeywordGenerator.cfm')#
</cfif>
Typically, the meta keywords tag is found in this file:
"[siteid]/includes/themes/[themeName (i.e., "merced")]/templates/inc/html_head.cfm"
Notes: Currently ONLY reads the body content and does not take any other content
into consideration. (i.e., content objects, etc.)
META KEYWORD GENERATOR PROCESS
Take the body content then:
1. remove html
2. remove puncuation
3. remove whitespace, line breaks and convert to a list
4. remove duplicate words
5. remove common words (i.e., a, an, the, etc.)
- list can be modified in the variable "commonWords" below.
6. sort the list (not necessary, but useful)
Revision Log:
20091005.01 - sjw - first draft.
20091023.01 - sjw - updated mura methods to reflect current best practice: event.getContentRenderer() and event.getContentBean() vs. renderer and request.contentbean, etc.
--->
<!--- LIST OF COMMON WORDS TO BE REMOVED --->
<cfset commonWords = "a, also, an, and, and, are, as, at, be, but, by, for, from, had, have, he, his, i, in, is, it, of, on, or, that, the, they, this, to, too, was, what, who, with" />
<!--- GRAB THE BODY CONTENT --->
<cfset str = event.getContentBean().getBody() />
<!--- helper functions from CFLib.org --->
<cfscript>
/**
* Case-insensitive function for removing duplicate entries in a list.
* Based on dedupe by Raymond Camden
*
* @param list List to be modified. (Required)
* @return Returns a list.
* @author Jeff Howden (cflib@jeffhowden.com)
* @version 1, July 2, 2008
*/
function listDeleteDuplicatesNoCase(list) {
var i = 1;
var delimiter = ',';
var returnValue = '';
if(ArrayLen(arguments) GTE 2)
delimiter = arguments[2];
list = ListToArray(list, delimiter);
for(i = 1; i LTE ArrayLen(list); i = i + 1)
if(NOT ListFindNoCase(returnValue, list[i], delimiter))
returnValue = ListAppend(returnValue, list[i], delimiter);
return returnValue;
}
/**
* Delete items from a list.
*
* @param variable An item, or a list of items, to remove from the list. (Required)
* @param qs The actual list to parse. Can be blank. (Optional)
* @return Returns a string.
* @author Alessandro Chisari (ruchizzy@hotmail.com)
* @version 1, May 17, 2006
*/
function listdelete(variable){
//var to hold the final string
var string = "";
//vars for use in the loop, so we don't have to evaluate lists and arrays more than once
var ii = 1;
var thisVar = "";
var thisIndex = "";
var array = "";
var qs = "";
if(arrayLen(arguments) GT 1)
qs = arguments[2];
//put the query string into an array for easier looping
array = listToArray(qs,",");
//now, loop over the array and rebuild the string
for(ii = 1; ii lte arrayLen(array); ii = ii + 1){
thisIndex = array[ii];
thisVar = thisIndex;
//if this is the var, edit it to the value, otherwise, just append
if(not listFindnocase(variable,thisVar))
string = listAppend(string,thisIndex,",");
}
//return the string
return string;
}
</cfscript>
<cfif len(trim(str))>
<!--- 1. remove html (using built-in mura method) --->
<cfset str = event.getContentRenderer().stripHTML(str) />
<!--- 2. remove punctuation (this regex ain't pretty, but it works) --->
<cfset str = REReplace(str, "[;\\/:""*?<>|\!\+\-\=\.`\##\&_\(\)\[\]\%\^\$\@~\',\{\}]+", "", "ALL") />
<!--- 3. remove whitespace, line breaks and convert to a list --->
<cfset str = REReplace(str, "\s|\r?\n", ",", "ALL") />
<!--- 4. remove duplicate words --->
<cfset str = listDeleteDuplicatesNoCase(str) />
<!--- 5. remove common words --->
<cfset str = listdelete(commonWords,str) />
<!--- 6. sort the list --->
<cfset str = listSort(lcase(str), "text") />
</cfif>
</cfsilent>
<cfoutput><meta name="keywords" content="#str#" /></cfoutput>
The meta description generator will also read the main "content" of the page and grab the first twenty-five (25) words to automatically create the meta description. This also makes for good SEO since the description matches what's actually found on the page. Let's save the following file at "[siteid]/includes/display_objects/custom/dspMetaDescriptionGenerator.cfm"
<cfsilent>
<!---
Document: dspMetaDescriptionGenerator.cfm
Version: 20091023.01
Author: Stephen Withington | www.stephenwithington.com
Purpose: I generate a meta description based on the body content.
Instructions: Assuming you save this file to:
"[siteid]/includes/display_objects/custom/dspMetaDescriptionGenerator.cfm"
Locate your current meta description tag and replace with the following code:
<cfif len(trim(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaDesc()))>
<meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaDesc())#" />
<cfelse>
#event.getContentRenderer().dspInclude('display_objects/custom/dspMetaDescriptionGenerator.cfm')#
</cfif>
Typically, the meta description tag is found in this file:
"[siteid]/includes/themes/[themeName (i.e., "merced")]/templates/inc/html_head.cfm"
Notes: Currently ONLY reads the body content and does not take any other content
into consideration. (i.e., content objects, etc.)
META DESCRIPTION GENERATOR PROCESS
Take the body content then:
1. remove html
2. remove whitespace, line breaks
3. since Google will cut off anything more than
155(roughly) characters, let's limit this to the first 25 words.
Props: Ben Nadel's Post "Displaying A Blog Teaser":
http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:1718.view
John Whish's (www.aliaspooryorik.com/blog/) comments on Ben's Post above.
Revision Log:
20091005.01 - sjw - first draft.
20091023.01 - sjw - updated mura methods to reflect current best practice: event.getContentRenderer() and event.getContentBean() vs. renderer and request.contentbean, etc.
--->
<!--- GRAB THE BODY CONTENT --->
<cfset str = event.getContentBean().getbody() />
<cfif len(trim(str))>
<!--- 1. remove html (using built-in mura method) --->
<cfset str = event.getContentRenderer().stripHTML(str) />
<!--- 2. remove whitespace, line breaks and replace with a space between each word --->
<cfset str = REReplace(str, "[\s|\r?\n]+", " ", "ALL") />
<!--- 3. limit to the first 25 words --->
<cfset javaArray = CreateObject("java","java.util.Arrays") />
<cfset wordArray = javaArray.copyOf(str.Split( " " ), 26) />
<cfset str = ArrayToList(wordArray, " ") />
</cfif>
</cfsilent>
<cfoutput><meta name="description" content="#trim(str)#" /></cfoutput>
How To Use
Since there may be users who actually do use the description and/or keywords fields in the admin area of Mura CMS, you want to be sure to check for that first. So, all we need to do is locate where the meta tags are being displayed at, and then replace with some simple code. In most installations, the meta tags can be found in this file "[siteid]/includes/themes/[themeName (i.e., "merced")]/templates/inc/html_head.cfm."
<cfif len(trim(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaDesc()))>
<meta name="description" content="#HTMLEditFormat(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaDesc())#" />
<cfelse>
#event.getContentRenderer().dspInclude('display_objects/custom/dspMetaDescriptionGenerator.cfm')#
</cfif>
<cfif len(trim(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaKeywords()))>
<meta name="keywords" content="#HTMLEditFormat(event.getContentRenderer().getMetaKeywords())#" />
<cfelse>
#event.getContentRenderer().dspInclude('display_objects/custom/dspMetaKeywordGenerator.cfm')#
</cfif>
Hope this helps!
