Reference¶

Material for MkDocs is packed with many great features that make technical writing a pleasure. This section of the documentation explains how to set up a page, and showcases all available specimen that can be used directly from within Markdown files.

Configuration¶

This configuration allows to set a title and description for a page, change the template or define an icon to be rendered in the navigation. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

markdown_extensions:
  - meta

See additional configuration options:

• Metadata

Built-in meta plugin ¶

Sponsors only · insiders-4.21.0 · Plugin · Experimental

The built-in meta plugin allows to set front matter per folder, which is especially handy to ensure that all pages in a folder use specific templates or tags. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
  - meta

If you need to be able to build your documentation with and without Insiders, please refer to the built-in plugins section to learn how shared configurations help to achieve this.

The following configuration options are available:

meta_file

Default: **/.meta.yml – This option specifies the name of the meta files that the plugin should look for. The default setting assumes that meta files are called .meta.yml:

plugins:
  - meta:
      meta_file: '**/.meta.yml' # (1)!

1. Note that it's strongly recommended to prefix meta files with a ., since otherwise they would be included in the build output.

Usage¶

Setting the page title¶

When Metadata is enabled, the page title can be overridden for a document with some custom front matter. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
title: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet # (1)!
---

# Document title
...

1. This will set the title inside the HTML document's head for the generated page to this value. Note that the site title, which is set via site_name, is appended with a dash.

Setting the page description¶

When Metadata is enabled, the page description can be overridden for a document with custom front matter. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
description: Nullam urna elit, malesuada eget finibus ut, ac tortor. # (1)!
---

# Document title
...

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

Setting the page icon¶

Sponsors only · insiders-4.5.0 · Experimental

An icon can be assigned to each page, which is then rendered as part of the navigation sidebar. Ensure Metadata is enabled and add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
icon: material/emoticon-happy # (1)!
---

# Document title
...

1. Enter a few keywords to find the perfect icon using our icon search and click on the shortcode to copy it to your clipboard:

Setting the page template¶

If you're using theme extension and created a new page template in the overrides directory, you can enable it for a specific page. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
template: custom.html
---

# Document title
...

template: custom.html

Customization¶

Using metadata in templates¶

on all pages¶

In order to add custom meta tags to your document, you can extend the theme and override the extrahead block, e.g. to add indexing policies for search engines via the robots property:

{% extends "base.html" %}

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

on a single page¶

If you want to set a meta tag on a single page, or want to set different values for different pages, you can use the page.meta object inside your template override, e.g.:

{% extends "base.html" %}

{% block extrahead %}
  {% if page and page.meta and page.meta.robots %}
    <meta property="robots" content="{{ page.meta.robots }}" />
  {% else %}
    <meta property="robots" content="index, follow" />
  {% endif %}
{% endblock %}

You can now use robots exactly like title and description to set values. Note that in this case, the template defines an else branch, which would set a default if none was given.