Meta tags¶

In HTML, meta tags allow to provide additional metadata for a document, e.g. page titles and descriptions, additional assets to be loaded, and Open Graph data. While metadata can always be added via customization, some tags can be configured.

Configuration¶

Metadata¶

The Metadata extension, which is part of the standard Markdown library, adds the ability to add front matter to a document and can be enabled via mkdocs.yml:

markdown_extensions:
  - meta

Front matter is written as a series of key-value pairs at the beginning of the Markdown document, delimited by a blank line which ends the YAML context.

Usage¶

Setting the page title¶

If the Metadata extension is enabled, the page title can be overridden on a per-document basis with custom front matter:

---
title: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
---

This will set the title tag inside the document head for the current page to the provided value. Note that the site title is appended using a dash as a separator, which is the default behavior.

Setting the page description¶

If the Metadata extension is enabled, the page description can also be overridden on a per-document basis with custom front matter:

---
description: Nullam urna elit, malesuada eget finibus ut, ac tortor.
---

This will set the meta tag containing the site description inside the document head for the current page to the provided value.

Adding a web app manifest¶

A web app manifest is a simple JSON file that specifies how your web application should behave when installed on the user's mobile device or desktop, which can be set via mkdocs.yml:

extra:
  manifest: manifest.webmanifest

Customization¶

Custom meta tags¶

In order to add meta tags to your document, you can extend the theme and simply override the extrahead block with the respective tags, e.g. to set policies for search engines:

{% block extrahead %}
  <meta property="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" />
{% endblock %}

Some further examples, including Open Graph and Twitter Cards:

{% block extrahead %}
  {% set title = config.site_name %}
  {% if page and page.meta and page.meta.title %}
    {% set title = title ~ " - " ~ page.meta.title %}
  {% elif page and page.title and not page.is_homepage %}
    {% set title = title ~ " - " ~ page.title | striptags %}
  {% endif %}
  <meta property="og:type" content="website" />
  <meta property="og:title" content="{{ title }}" />
  <meta property="og:description" content="{{ config.site_description }}" />
  <meta property="og:url" content="{{ page.canonical_url }}" />
  <meta property="og:image" content="<url>" />
  <meta property="og:image:type" content="image/png" />
  <meta property="og:image:width" content="1200" />
  <meta property="og:image:height" content="630" />
{% endblock %}

{% block extrahead %}
  {% set title = config.site_name %}
  {% if page and page.meta and page.meta.title %}
    {% set title = title ~ " - " ~ page.meta.title %}
  {% elif page and page.title and not page.is_homepage %}
    {% set title = title ~ " - " ~ page.title | striptags %}
  {% endif %}
  <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
  <meta name="twitter:site" content="<username>" />
  <meta name="twitter:creator" content="<username>" />
  <meta name="twitter:title" content="{{ title }}" />
  <meta name="twitter:description" content="{{ config.site_description }}" />
  <meta name="twitter:image" content="<url>" />
{% endblock %}