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Expression Engine CMS How to populate meta tags dynamically?

I'm trying to add meta tags for description and keywords to my expression engine website.

My structure is this: I have a {top} snippet which is called in every template

Inside of the head tag I have this

<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<meta name="description" content="{exp:channel:entries}{blog_seo_description}{/exp:channel:entries}">
<meta name="author" content="http://epicsoftware.com" >
<meta name="keywords"  content="{blog_seo_keywords}" />
{if segment_1 == ""}
<title>Epic Software Group, Inc.</title>
{if:else}
{exp:channel:entries channel="main|blog|projects" limit="1" disable="categories|category_fields|custom_fields|member_data|pagination"}
<title>Epic Software Group, Inc. - {title}</title>
{/exp:channel:entries}
{/if}

When I write the description for one page it's applying the same description everywhere, I think that's because the top snippet doesn't know where the information is coming from. Also, I can't create another channel field with the same name in other channel field group

I need to create a channel field for each channel and show the information of THAT channel entry in the meta tag.

Expression Engine version: 2.11.2

Solution

  • You can do that a lot easier by using layouts: https://docs.expressionengine.com/v2/templates/layouts.html basically, you'll have a wrapper template that contains your basic template, and you feed the content from another template to this template. This way you only have to use the channel:entries tag once to set all the data. this is the basic template where i set the variables:

    {layout="_partials/_wrapper"}
{exp:channel:entries 
 channel="pages" 
 disable="categories|pagination|member_data|relationships"}
{layout:set name="extra_header_content"}<script src="/assets/js/my_extra_script.js">{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="browser_title"}{browser_title}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="seo_description"}{seo_description}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="page_title"}{page_title}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="body_content"}{body_text}{/layout:set}
{/exp:channel:entries}

    see me embedding the layout template on the first lin. My wrapper template looks like this:

    <!doctype html>
<html class="no-js" lang="nl" dir="ltr">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title>{layout:browser_title}</title>
<meta name='description' content='{layout:seo_description}' />
<meta name="twitter:description" content="{layout:seo_description}" />
<meta property="og:description" content="{layout:seo_description}">
{layout:extra_header_content}
</head>
<body>
<h1>{layout:page_title}</h1>
{layout:body_content}
</body>
</html>

    since you're on EE 2 you'll need to create fields for every browser title in it's own field group. this might be tedious, however if you name the fields a bit logically, you can use preload_replace https://docs.expressionengine.com/v2/templates/globals/preload_replacement.html to make your templating easier:

    say you have a channel called news, call your field "news_browser_title" and for the channel called pages create a field called "pages_browser_title"

    In your template you can now use it like this:

    {layout="_partials/_wrapper"}
{preload_replace:channel="pages"}
{exp:channel:entries 
 channel="pages" 
 disable="categories|pagination|member_data|relationships"}
{layout:set name="extra_header_content"}<script src="/assets/js/my_extra_script.js">{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="browser_title"}{{channel}_browser_title}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="seo_description"}{{channel}_seo_description}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="page_title"}{{channel}_page_title}{/layout:set}
{layout:set name="body_content"}{{channel}_body_text}{/layout:set}
{/exp:channel:entries}

    Update: You can put your wrapper template in whatever template group you like. I basically have a folder called _partials, which houses all my templates that i embed into other templates. Say you have a template group setup like this:

    _partials
    -_wrapper
    -_another_template
    -_some_other_template
blog
    -index
    -item
news
    -index
    -item

    in each of your templates in blog or news you can embed the same wrapper template with {layout="_partials/_wrapper"} because it just takes the template_group/template_name as input.

    If you need more help, just head over to https://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/ for more specific EE advice