Webmasters updating to Yoast SEO 19.5 may encounter a bug that makes their site inaccessible. Feedback of the fatal bug caused by the update quickly abounded, but not everyone encountered it and seemed to be limited to specific cases. On the same day, the Yoast team immediately released Yoast SEO 19.5.1 to fix the bug.
Table of contents
- What's New in Yoast SEO Version 19.5?
- Yoast SEO 19.5 Fatal Error
- Yoast SEO 19.5.1 fixed the issue
What's New in Yoast SEO Version 19.5?
Enhancements:
- Add site logo and name as default in first configuration and search appearance.
- Change the output order of the Schema node from
Organization / Person > WebSite > WebPage > ArticletoArticle > WebPage > WebSite > Organization / Person. This fixes the Schema validator's validation issues and puts the most important Schema content first.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug where text starting with a double quote followed by a space broke parsing.
- Fixed a bug where text containing the non-breaking space character (
) was not highlighted correctly. - Fixed a bug where Algolia integration could not be controlled at the network level.
- Fixed a bug where the score indicator in the classic editor would not update the hover text when the score changes.
- Fixed a bug where the score indicators in the overview page and admin bar were inconsistent. Category overview and admin bar score indicators are now represented in red
Focus keyphrase not set. When set to, the admin bar score indicator now shows bluenoindex.
Yoast SEO 19.5 Fatal Error
Fatal error: Uncaught YoastSEO_Vendor
"I woke up today and tried to access my website's dashboard, but got a fatal error and I can't access it through the backend or login.
Yoast SEO Support Page
How can I fix this."
Someone else responded to the same question, and one of them replied:
"Same here. Unable to log into backend, both site and backend throw fatal errors.
Saw Yoast auto-updated today.
Moved free and premium versions from plugins directory to temp directory, now the site is back online. "
Yoast SEO Support Page
Yoast's official support staff apologised and responded with the following statement :
"We're sorry you encountered a fatal error. Thanks for your report.
We're investigating and there seems to be an issue with the latest update of Yoast SEO, and the latest Premium hasn't been released yet. This shouldn't happen.
We are looking to fix this issue as soon as possible by releasing a patch for free and releasing Yoast SEO Premium as soon as possible.
Either the fatal error should be fixed.
Official support staff of Yoast
Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast:
For some sites, the automatic update mechanism does not work properly, so these sites do not automatically repair themselves.
We've been discussing this internally because we're not at all happy that this happened and we're not happy with the way it's been handled. Honestly, we're all very frustrated by this and sorry for our broken site. "
Joost de Valk
Yoast SEO 19.5.1 fixed the issue
The cause of the problem appears to be that Yoast released an update to the free version of Yoast (19.5), but not the premium version at the same time, which caused the two plugin to conflicts, results in a fatal error.
19.5.1 Changelog
Release Date: August 9, 2022
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug that would throw a fatal error on the front end when Yoast SEO 19.5 was used with an older version of Yoast SEO Premium .
For a WordPress plugin with millions of users , this failure has a great impact. Although the official team immediately released an update to fix the error, it also shows that the testing work is not rigorous, and most of the fatal errors occurred. The site is because the automatic update function is turned on.
