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",
    twitter_card_type="summary_large_image",
    twitter_handle="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_large_image">
<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 eight 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.

Besides the default generated <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 if you need. Template variables can be used in the Nunjucks and Liquid shortcode arguments without the curly braces or quotes like title=page.url (Nunjucks) or title (Liquid). More on template variable usage below.

Shortcode Options

If atleast one parameter 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 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. All other arguments if omitted, will not have meta tags generated.

Using {% metagen %} without any arguments will throw Error: No data was added into the meta generator and return an empty string.

Shorthand Nunjucks Usage

To turn the shortcode into a one-liner, you can define an object in front matter, global data or another data source with the required key/value pairs and supply the shortcode with a single parameter.

---
data: 
    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
    twitter_card_type: summary_large_image
    twitter_handle: tannerdolby
    name: Tanner Dolby
---
<head>
  {% metagen data %}
</head>

Use Your Template Data

To make your metadata dynamic, you can use template data as arguments to the shortcode, 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: Archimedean spiral
type: summary_large_image 
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,
    twitter_card_type=type,
    twitter_handle=twitter,
    name=name
%}

As a general rule, don't forget your in a templating engine context. Use your variables in the shortcode as you would inside {% var %} tags or {{ var }} without the curly braces like title=var.

Liquid Usage

If you would like to use Liquid (which is the default templating engine in Eleventy). Then utilize the following syntax, to turn shortcodes like this:

---
data: 
    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
    twitter_card_type: summary_large_image
    twitter_handle: tannerdolby
    name: Tanner Dolby
---
<head>
  {% metagen data %}
</head>

into <meta> tags and 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_large_image">
<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">

The Liquid usage is a bit different as the shortcode expects a single parameter representing an object with key/value pairs. You can define the object in front matter like shown above or within global data files.

Meta Tag Reference

• Open Graph
• Twitter Card

Maintainers

@tannerdolby

Other Meta tag generators

• eleventy-plugin-meta-generator