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Getting Started

Citelayer® System Requirements & SEO Plugin Compatibility

5 min read

System Requirements & SEO Plugin Compatibility

Before you install Citelayer®, check that your environment meets these requirements. If you already run a popular SEO plugin, you’re in good shape — Citelayer® detects it automatically and adjusts its behavior so nothing breaks.

Minimum Requirements

Citelayer® 0.3.1 requires:

  • PHP 7.4 or higher — The plugin is designed to work with PHP 7.4 and above. While it runs best on PHP 8.1+, it maintains backward compatibility with PHP 7.4 to support a wide range of WordPress hosting environments.
  • WordPress 6.4 or higher — Citelayer® hooks into REST API improvements and block editor capabilities introduced in WP 6.4. Earlier versions lack the infrastructure the plugin depends on.

Most managed WordPress hosts (Cloudways, Kinsta, SiteGround, WP Engine) already meet both requirements. If you’re unsure, check Tools → Site Health → Info → Server in your WordPress dashboard.

Bundled Dependencies

Citelayer® bundles one external library via Composer:

  • league/html-to-markdown — Powers the Markdown content feature. The library ships inside the plugin directory; you don’t need to install Composer on your server or manage any packages yourself.

No other external dependencies exist. No JavaScript frameworks, no CDN calls, no external API keys required for core functionality.

Compatible SEO Plugins

Citelayer® works alongside every major WordPress SEO plugin. It detects which SEO plugin you run, identifies its capabilities, and adjusts features like Schema markup and llms.txt output to avoid duplicates or conflicts.

Rank Math (+ Rank Math Pro)

Citelayer® auto-detects both the free and Pro versions of Rank Math. You get two compatibility modes for Schema and llms.txt:

  • Enhance mode — Citelayer® adds its structured data alongside Rank Math’s existing schema output. Both plugins contribute to the final JSON-LD graph. Citelayer® fills gaps that Rank Math doesn’t cover (like knowsAbout, expertise, and AI-specific metadata).
  • Replace mode — Citelayer® takes full control of Schema output and llms.txt generation. Rank Math’s schema is disabled to prevent duplicate markup.

If you run both Rank Math free and Rank Math Pro, Citelayer® treats them as one family — no conflict.

Yoast SEO (+ Yoast SEO Premium)

Full compatibility with both free and Premium versions. Like Rank Math, you choose between Enhance and Replace modes for Schema and llms.txt.

One extra detail: Yoast writes a physical llms.txt file to your server’s root directory in some configurations. Citelayer® detects this and handles it gracefully — in Enhance mode it merges content; in Replace mode it serves its own version via WordPress rewrite rules without deleting Yoast’s file.

All in One SEO (AIOSEO)

Auto-detected. Citelayer® ensures its Schema output stays compatible with AIOSEO’s structured data. Both plugins can output JSON-LD without conflicts in Enhance mode.

SEOPress (+ SEOPress Pro)

Auto-detected. Schema compatibility works the same way — Citelayer® reads SEOPress’s configuration and adjusts its output. Free and Pro versions are treated as one family.

The SEO Framework

Auto-detected. The SEO Framework takes a minimalist approach to schema, which makes coexistence straightforward. Citelayer® adds its structured data without overlap.

Slim SEO

Auto-detected. Slim SEO’s lightweight schema output is compatible with Citelayer®’s additions. No special configuration needed.

How the Compatibility System Works

Citelayer® scans active plugins on every admin page load and groups them into families. A family is a set of related plugins from the same vendor:

  • Rank Math + Rank Math Pro = 1 family
  • Yoast SEO + Yoast SEO Premium = 1 family
  • SEOPress + SEOPress Pro = 1 family

Running multiple plugins within the same family is fine. Citelayer® merges them into a single detection result and applies one set of compatibility rules.

The Multi-Family Conflict State

Problems arise when you activate SEO plugins from two or more different families at the same time — for example, Rank Math and Yoast SEO together. This is a conflict that exists regardless of Citelayer®: two competing SEO plugins produce duplicate meta tags, duplicate schema, and unpredictable behavior.

When Citelayer® detects a multi-family conflict:

  1. A conflict banner appears at the top of the Citelayer® dashboard explaining which plugin families are active.
  2. SEO-dependent features pause automatically. Schema output and llms.txt generation stop until you resolve the conflict by deactivating one of the SEO plugins.
  3. The REST API endpoints for schema and llms.txt return HTTP 503 responses instead of data.

This is intentional. Generating structured data on top of an already-broken SEO setup would make things worse, not better.

Features That Never Conflict

Some Citelayer® features don’t interact with SEO plugins at all and work regardless of your SEO setup — even during a multi-family conflict:

  • WebMCP — The Model Context Protocol server operates independently of any SEO plugin.
  • Markdown — Content conversion to Markdown uses the bundled HTML-to-Markdown library with no SEO plugin interaction.
  • UCP Discovery — Universal Content Protocol discovery headers are added via their own mechanism, separate from schema or llms.txt.

Checking Your Setup

After installing Citelayer®, visit the Dashboard tab in your WordPress admin. The status panel shows:

  • Your PHP and WordPress versions (with green/red indicators)
  • Which SEO plugin family Citelayer® detected
  • The current compatibility mode (Enhance or Replace)
  • Whether any conflicts exist

If everything shows green, you’re ready to configure your Schema markup and start making your content visible to AI systems.