Textpattern CMS

#1 2009-02-18 09:39:01

yojinbo

New Member

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 2

Static pages and meta data

I’m stumped on this one – if it’s a simple solution, I’d appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction as I haven’t been able to wrap head around it, nor have I come across anything in the forums dealing with this particular problem, at least from the way I’m approaching it.

I’m using Textpattern for a mostly static site. I had no problem creating the static pages thanks to the FAQ, but I’ve run into problems when dealing with getting the meta data to reflect the current page. For example:

I’ve got a form which loads the meta data into the head of the HTML which goes something like this:

<txp:if_individual_article>
<title><txp:custom_field name="meta_title" default='<txp:title />' /> | <txp:site_name /></title>
<meta name="description"  content="<txp:custom_field name="meta_description" default="foo" />" />
<meta name="keywords"  content="<txp:custom_field name="meta_keywords" default="bar" />" />
<txp:else />
<title><txp:site_slogan /> | <txp:site_name /></title>
<meta name="description"  content="foo" />
<meta name="keywords"  content="bar" />
</txp:if_individual_article>

This works fine for dynamic pages, but when loading a static page, the second code block is always (understandably) being called. Other than creating a different page template for each static page (which seems like a horribly inefficient way of approaching things), how can I work around this particular problem?

#2 2009-02-18 10:31:10

Mary

Sock Enthusiast

Registered: 2004-06-27

Posts: 6,236

Re: Static pages and meta data

Off the top of my head:

<txp:if_individual_article>
	<title><txp:custom_field name="meta_title" default='<txp:title />' /> | <txp:site_name /></title>
	<meta name="description" content="<txp:custom_field name="meta_description" default="foo" />" />
	<meta name="keywords" content="<txp:custom_field name="meta_keywords" default="bar" />" />
<txp:else />
	<!-- names of your sections that are "static" pages -->
	<txp:if_section name="about,contact">
		<!-- create a form named section_meta for each static page,
		     e.g: about_meta, contact_meta -->
		<txp:output_form name='<txp:section />_meta' />
	<txp:else />
		<title><txp:site_slogan /> | <txp:site_name /></title>
		<meta name="description"  content="foo" />
		<meta name="keywords"  content="bar" />
	</txp:if_section>
</txp:if_individual_article>

example form: about_meta

<title>About | <txp:site_name /></title>
<meta name="description" content="foo" />
<meta name="keywords" content="bar" />

There have been a couple plugins in the past for this sort of thing, but all the ones I could find were quite old and I don’t know how well they work.

(Edit: corrected code)

Last edited by Mary (2009-02-18 22:46:11)

#3 2009-02-18 13:33:54

maniqui

Member

From: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Registered: 2004-10-10

Posts: 3,070

Website

Re: Static pages and meta data

Just a minor correction:

<txp:output_form name='<txp:section />_meta' /> (single quotes instead of double quotes, so the tag-in-tag could be parsed)

And a recommended plug-in for all meta/SEO tasks is rah_metas

---

La música ideas portará y siempre continuará

TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp

#4 2009-02-18 14:56:01

yojinbo

New Member

Registered: 2009-02-18

Posts: 2

Re: Static pages and meta data

Mary, maniqui – thank you both for your suggestions – I’ll go back to playing around with things. With a combination of Mary’s code and rah_metas, I think I’ll have a pretty good chance of solving my current issues.

Again, thanks for helping out a noob!