eleventy-plugin-metagen

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:img" content="https://tannerdolby.com/images/arch-spiral-large.jpg"> 
<meta property="og:img: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 until there is support for template variables to be parameters in the metagen shortcode. You might only need a few meta tags instead of the whole set, simply use 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 }}>".

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

• Open Graph
• Twitter Card

TODO

• Figure out how to use template variables as parameters to the shortcode, I tried pairedShortCode but need to investigate more.
• Use Open Graph API with eleventy-cache-assets to cache the url request and make sure output is correct for meta tags.
• Maybe add a few more meta tags that are commonly used and not included in the shortcode output

Limitations

Currently the biggest limitation of this plugin is the fact that the parameters passed into the shortcode metagen will have to be user input strings. Passing template variables such as {{ var }} as parameters to metagen is not yet supported. If you want to use data from eleventy front matter data, global data and things like {{ page.url }}. You must wait until its supported.

Note: I recommend using the metagen shortcode for HTML pages that don't rely on data from front matter, global data or eleventyComputed in the <head>. One example of the current limitations occur when using Pagination.

Since the pages are being generated from a single layout or template file with Pagination, I use <meta property="og:url" content="{{ page.url }}"> to provide the correct URL even if the filename changes. This is a clear example of where you would keep the <meta> tags that need template variable data {{ data }} and use metagen for any remaining tags until this functionality is supported.

Maintainers

@tannerdolby

Other Meta tag generators

• eleventy-plugin-meta-generator