Health Check
The Health Check feature can be found on the WP Recipe Maker > Dashboard page and checks for recipe-related issues on your site. Click Run Check in the Health Check block to start. The results show when the last check ran. If the checks have changed since your last run, you may see outdated version and a recommendation to run them again.
Ideally, run the health check every month or so, allowing you to quickly act if it finds any problems. Run it again after fixing issues to refresh the dashboard totals. A Health Check also generates SEO data for recipes whose Manage indicator says missing.
Health Check Sections
Section titled “Health Check Sections”Depending on the problems it finds, the following sections can show up:
This section gives you an overview of the SEO checker results. Click a status in the Health Check to open the matching recipes on WP Recipe Maker > Manage. The labels summarize the result, so read each recipe’s issue list for the exact reason.
| Health Check status | What to check |
|---|---|
| Good SEO | The checker found no issues. This does not guarantee rankings or appearance in Google search results. |
| Only missing recipe ratings | The remaining issue concerns ratings: either visitors have not rated the recipe, or rating features are turned off. |
| Missing some recommended fields | Review recommendations such as missing summary, times or calories, an image under 1200 pixels wide, or unavailable video details. |
| Missing some required fields | Fix required fields first. For food recipes these include Name and Image. This status can also mean metadata is not output because the recipe is not in a post, or the first-recipe-only setting excludes it. Missing required video details can also appear here. |
| Not using metadata (excluded from count) | Recipes marked as type Other do not output metadata and are excluded from the good-SEO total. |
The recipe metadata checker has an interactive issue list. Hover over a recipe’s SEO indicator and use Fix to open the relevant recipe section, Add to post to place it in a post, or Change setting for metadata output or rating settings. Clicking the indicator opens the first actionable issue. These actions are available for recipes you can edit.
Recommended issues are different from missing required fields. They help you make the metadata more complete without necessarily making the recipe ineligible for rich results. An image-size warning is also separate from the Missing Thumbnails section below: regenerating thumbnails does not make a small original image wider.
For Only missing recipe ratings, there is no field to fill in on behalf of your visitors. Our User Ratings and Comment Ratings both count towards the rating. If the checker says Star ratings are turned off, use Change setting to review the Star Ratings settings.
If video details are still being fetched, the checker shows a note. Failed retrieval can produce Video left out of the metadata instead. Use Check video to review the video in Media or Refresh Video Metadata on WP Recipe Maker > Tools. See Recipe Video.
Once you have saved your changes, use the checker’s Google Rich Results Test and Schema.org Validator links to test the published page. These links appear when the checker has a published URL to test; the page must be publicly accessible to the external tools. You can also open the Google Rich Results Test or Schema.org Validator directly. The Health Check is an overview of plugin checks, so testing the actual page is a useful final step.
Multiple Parents
Section titled “Multiple Parents”These recipes have been added to more than 1 post or page. A recipe should generally only exist in 1 parent post. References should be made using the Recipe Roundup feature instead. This is also recommended for SEO.
Missing Thumbnails
Section titled “Missing Thumbnails”When you upload an image to WordPress it automatically generates multiple thumbnail sizes for that image. So if your original image is 1200 by 1200 pixels, WordPress will make sure different, smaller thumbnails exist as well so that these can be used throughout your site if the original (large and heavy) image isn’t needed.
Google expects to see 3 different ratios for the recipe image in the recipe metadata. WP Recipe Maker automatically generates those ratios for the recipe images, but some of them might be missing. This can happen if you converted those recipes from another plugin, for example.
The first thing to try is using the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin. After installing you can go to the Tools > Regenerate Thumbnails page and click the blue button to regenerate thumbnails for all your images. This makes sure that the required thumbnail sizes (asked for by your theme and plugins) exist for every image.
It could also be that the images you uploaded are too small. Make sure they are at least 500 by 500 pixels and have a look at these recommendations.
Duplicate Names
Section titled “Duplicate Names”This section shows up if multiple recipes with the exact same name were found.
We’ve seen it happen when importing from other plugins that you end up with duplicates. Usually the one that isn’t actually used in a parent post can safely be deleted.
Compatibility
Section titled “Compatibility”WP Recipe Maker should work fine with most plugins and themes, but if we do learn about a compatibility issue that not can be fix from our end, we’ll mention it in this section. The section will only show up if you have a plugin/theme causing that problem enabled.
Searching other post types
Section titled “Searching other post types”By default the Health Check only searches through posts and pages, looking for recipes. If you have an advanced setup with recipes being added to a different post type, you could use the wprm_health_check_post_types filter hook to add your custom post type.