README
eleventy-plugin-metagen
An Eleventy shortcode that generates document metadata containing: Open Graph, Twitter card, generic meta tags and a canonical link.
Installation
In your Eleventy project, install the plugin from npm:
npm install eleventy-plugin-metagen
Then add it to your Eleventy Config file:
const metagen = require('eleventy-plugin-metagen');
module.exports = (eleventyConfig) => {
eleventyConfig.addPlugin(metagen);
};
What does it do?
The plugin turns 11ty shortcodes like this:
{% metagen
title="Eleventy Plugin Add Meta Tags",
desc="An eleventy shortcode for generating meta tags.",
url="https://tannerdolby.com",
img="https://tannerdolby.com/images/arch-spiral-large.jpg",
img_alt="Archimedean Spiral",
twitterHandle="@tannerdolby",
name="Tanner Dolby"
%}
into <meta> tags and other document metadata like this:
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width initial-scale=1">
<title>Eleventy Plugin Add Meta Tags</title>
<meta name="author" content="Tanner Dolby">
<meta name="description" content="An eleventy shortcode for generating meta tags.">
<meta property="og:title" content="Eleventy Plugin Add Meta Tags">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:description" content="An eleventy shortcode for generating meta tags.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://tannerdolby.com">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://tannerdolby.com/images/arch-spiral-large.jpg">
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="Archimedean Spiral">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@tannerdolby">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Eleventy Plugin Add Meta Tags">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="An eleventy shortcode for generating meta tags.">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://tannerdolby.com/images/arch-spiral-large.jpg">
<meta name="twitter:image:alt" content="Archimedean Spiral">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://tannerdolby.com">
Custom Usage
Providing all seven comma separated arguments to metagen is recommended. You might only need a few <meta> tags instead of the whole set, simply provide the arguments you need and the ones not included won't generate <meta> tags.
Only the arguments you provide data for will be generated as <meta> tags. This allows you to include some of your own tags alongside metagen that use data from other sources, such as <meta property="og:title" content="{{ page.url }}>". The following template variable can be used in the shortcodes parameter without the curly braces or quotes like title=page.url. More on template variable usage below.
Shortcode Options
If data is provided to metagen, the default tags aside from the main Open Graph and Twitter card data are:
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width initial-scale=1">
<title></title>
<meta name="author" content="">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
The title parameter also provides data for <title>. If title is not defined within metagen the <title> element will not be generated with the above default tags. The same rules apply for name and desc.
Using {% metagen %} without any arguments will throw Error: No data was added into the meta generator and return an empty string.
Meta Tag Reference
Use Your Template Data
To make your metadata dynamic, you can use template data as arguments to the short code, without quotes or braces:
---
title: Some title
desc: Some description
metadata:
title: Some other title
desc: Some other description
url: https://tannerdolby.com
image: https://tannerdolby.com/images/arch-spiral-large.jpg
alt: Archimedian spiral
twitter: "@tannerdolby"
name: Tanner Dolby
---
{% metagen
title=title or metadata.title,
desc=desc or metadata.desc,
url=url + page.url,
img=image,
img_alt=alt,
twitterHandle=twitter,
name=name
%}
As a general rule, don't forget your in a templating engine context, so use your variables in the shortcode as you would inside {% %} tags or {{ }}.