Automatic fields

A field marked Filled automatically if left empty pulls from the post being rendered:

• Headline / Name — the post title
• Description — the excerpt, or the first 55 words of the content
• Image — the featured image
• Author — the post's author, as a person (see Authors below)
• Published / Modified — the post dates
• URL — the permalink
• Publisher — your site identity

A password-protected post never gives its content away here: its description is left out rather than taken from words only the password should reveal, and so is an excerpt written for it, as WordPress itself keeps that behind the password too.

A post kept for members is described only by an excerpt you write for it. Without one, the description is left out rather than taken from its first words, which are what the members pay for. That covers a post, page or product restricted by MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, WooCommerce Memberships or Restrict Content Pro, and a LearnDash lesson, topic or quiz, unless its course is open to everyone or the lesson is a free sample. A lesson shared between courses keeps its words only when every course it is in is open to everyone (LearnDash's Open access mode); if any of them is free with sign-up, paid, recurring or closed, or a course's access mode was never saved, it is treated as members-only, to be on the safe side, even when its own course is open. It depends on the post, not on who is looking, so the post editor shows you what a visitor's markup says even though you can read the post. Another membership plugin can say which posts it keeps back with the trsch_post_is_restricted filter. Markup already stored for a page is refreshed within a day of restricting it, or straight away with Clear schema cache on the Tools screen.

On a WooCommerce shop, a Product schema's price, currency, stock status, SKU, brand, GTIN, sale end date, rating and review count fill from each product in the same way.

This is why one Article schema targeted at all posts is usually enough: every post fills in its own values. Type something into a field only when you want to override the automatic value for every page the schema applies to.

Authors#

Where a schema's author fills itself in (an article's, recipe's, book's or forum post's author, a review's reviewer, an answer's author, an image's or a dataset's creator, a profile page's person), the markup names the post's author as a person, the way Google's article documentation asks: their name, their author page as url, and one @id, the author page's address followed by #person, so every post they wrote points at the same person. The page carries that person once, and each schema on it names them by @id.

What else is said about them comes from their profile, under Users → Profile:

• Biographical Info, WordPress's own field, as the description.
• Website, WordPress's own field, as one of their profiles elsewhere.
• Job title, in the Author Markup section Schema Pro adds to the profile of everyone who can write posts.
• Profiles elsewhere, in that section: one full link per line, such as a social profile, their own site or a Wikipedia page about them. A line that is not a web address stops the profile from being updated, with a message naming it, as WordPress does for an email address that is not one; the box keeps what was typed so it can be put right. A link typed without https:// is given it.
• Links already typed into Yoast SEO's or Rank Math's profile fields (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and the others, and Rank Math's additional profile URLs) are used too, without typing them again, whether or not that plugin is still active. An X username becomes its https://x.com/ address. The section lists them, with Leave these out to stop using them. Schema Pro only reads those fields; it never changes them.
• Profile picture: only when Include the profile picture is ticked and the site shows avatars (Settings → Discussion). Google does not accept a placeholder, and nothing on the site can tell a real picture from the default one, so the author says so.

Each link is said once, and at most ten are used. Nothing else about the account is published: not the email address, the username, the date it was made or its ID. Every field is optional; an author who fills in nothing is a person with a name and an author page.

A name typed into the schema's author field instead is somebody else, and is written as a name only. Typing the author's own display name is the same as leaving it empty.

If author pages are switched off in Yoast SEO or Rank Math, both of which send them to the home page, the person has no url, and their @id is the home page's address with a code that says nothing about the account. On a network the same goes for an author who is no longer a member of the site. A developer can give another page as the address with the trsch_author_url filter (for example an About page), say that author pages lead nowhere with trsch_author_archives_off, or change the whole person with trsch_author_person.

On a network, a user's profile is the same on every site, so are these fields; each site writes its own author page into the markup.

Tools → Export Personal Data lists the job title, the links and the picture choice, and Erase Personal Data removes them, along with the Leave these out choice. The links in Yoast SEO's or Rank Math's fields belong to those plugins.

Author pages#

With Author page markup ticked under Site Identity → Output, each author's page (the address their posts' markup gives as their url) is marked up as a ProfilePage whose main entity is that person, as Google recommends for an author's own page. Only the first page of it, and only for someone with at least one published post. It stands down when Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO is active, since each writes a profile page there itself, unless Output these anyway is ticked under Tools → Other schema plugins; and when one of your own schemas puts a Profile Page or a Person on that page.

It is on for a new install. A site that had Schema Pro before is asked once, on the Dashboard: Mark up author pages or Not now. Saving Site Identity with the box unticked does not answer that question.