Meta tag description -- required?

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Toko
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2018 3:24 am

Meta tag description -- required?

Post by Toko »

Hi

I understand that web browsers automatically use H1 of HTML files (topics) as the meta tag description?

Does this mean it would be superfluous to manually add a meta tag description per HTML file (I have over 1,000 topics!)?

Another issue: The meta tag "title" doesn't seem to work. This meta tag should be the label (name) that is displayed on the web browser's tab for the opened HTML file (topic).
NorthEast
Master Propellus Maximus
Posts: 6359
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:33 am

Re: Meta tag description -- required?

Post by NorthEast »

Toko wrote:I understand that web browsers automatically use H1 of HTML files (topics) as the meta tag description?
I don't quite understand what you mean there.

The h1 tag and the meta tag description are two separate things, and the web browser doesn't handle them in that way.

I can try and explain how to use the title and meta description though:

* The <title> tag is used as the page title by search engines and on the browser tab. If you don't set a <title> tag in a topic, Flare (not the web browser) will automatically generate the <title> tag in the output for you, using the text from the h1 (if it exists) or the file name.

* The meta description (<meta name="description" content="xyz">) is used by MadCap's search engine as the description in the search results, and that is sometimes used by external search engines like Google (not the web browser), but Google will often generate its own descriptions.
Toko wrote:Another issue: The meta tag "title" doesn't seem to work. This meta tag should be the label (name) that is displayed on the web browser's tab for the opened HTML file (topic).
You can set this in a topic using the <title> tag, or if you don't include it Flare will generate the title for you in the ouput from the h1.
Toko
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Jul 05, 2018 3:24 am

Re: Meta tag description -- required?

Post by Toko »

Thanks Dave for the explanation!

If I want the browser tab to also include our company name (for example, "Configuring Bots - MyCompany"), how would I do this?
NorthEast
Master Propellus Maximus
Posts: 6359
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:33 am

Re: Meta tag description -- required?

Post by NorthEast »

Toko wrote:Thanks Dave for the explanation!

If I want the browser tab to also include our company name (for example, "Configuring Bots - MyCompany"), how would I do this?
You can set the title for invididual topics like this:

Code: Select all

<title>[%=Heading.AnyLevel%] - My Company</title>
Use whatever variable is appropriate.

However, I'm not aware of any way to add this to topics automatically, as Flare will ignore a <title> you add in the master page, or add in the target's Advanced tab.
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