Reference¶
Material for MkDocs is packed with many great features that make technical writing a joyful activity. 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¶
Usage¶
Setting the page title
¶
Each page has a designated title, which is used in the navigation sidebar, for social cards and in other places. While MkDocs attempts to automatically determine the title of a page in a four step process, the title can also be explicitly set with the front matter title
property:
- This line sets the
title
inside the HTML document'shead
for the generated page to the given value. Note that the site title, which is set viasite_name
, is appended with a dash.
Setting the page description
¶
A Markdown file can include a description that is added to the meta
tags of a page, and is also used for social cards. It's a good idea to set a site_description
in mkdocs.yml
as a fallback value if the author does not explicitly define a description for a Markdown file:
---
description: Nullam urna elit, malesuada eget finibus ut, ac tortor. # (1)!
---
# Page title
...
- This line sets the
meta
tag containing the description inside the documenthead
for the current page to the provided value.
Setting the page icon
¶
An icon can be assigned to each page, which is then rendered as part of the navigation sidebar, as well as navigation tabs, if enabled. Use the front matter icon
property to reference an icon, adding the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:
-
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 status
¶
A status can be assigned to each page, which is then displayed as part of the navigation sidebar. First, associate a status identifier with a description by adding the following to mkdocs.yml
:
-
The identifier can only include alphanumeric characters, as well as dashes and underscores. For example, if you have a status
Recently added
, you can setnew
as an identifier:
The page status can now be set with the front matter status
property. For example, you can mark a page as new
with the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:
The following status identifiers are already defined:
- –
new
- –
deprecated
You can define a custom page status this way but if you want it to have an icon other than the default one you need to also configure that in your extra.css
. We have an example for a custom page status to get you started.
Setting the page subtitle
¶
Each page can define a subtitle, which is then rendered below the title as part of the navigation sidebar by using the front matter subtitle
property, and adding the following lines:
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:
How to set a page template for an entire folder?
With the help of the built-in meta plugin, you can set a custom template for an entire section and all nested pages, by creating a .meta.yml
file in the corresponding folder with the following content:
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 name="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 name="robots" content="{{ page.meta.robots }}" />
{% else %}
<meta name="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.