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Global Meta Tags

When search engines index your site, social platforms generate previews, and assistive technologies announce your page to readers, the metadata in <head> is the first thing they see.

Bark gives you a comfortable set of controls for all of it directly inside docs/config.json, so the same file that shapes your navigation also shapes how your content appears to the wider web.

Page Titles ​

By default, each page takes its title from its frontmatter title field. Adding a title at the site level turns that into a suffix pattern, so your visitors always know which documentation site they are reading.

json
{
  "title": "Bark"
}

A page called "Getting Started" becomes Getting Started | Bark in the browser tab automatically. If no site title is set, the page title is used on its own, exactly as it was before.

If you would like more control over the separator or the order, titleTemplate lets you define the pattern yourself using two placeholders:

Placeholder Replaced with
:title The current page's title
:siteName The value of title
json
{
  "title": "Bark",
  "titleTemplate": ":title · :siteName"
}

A page called "Configuration" would then produce Configuration · Bark. You can place the placeholders in any order and use any separator character you like.

INFO

If you set titleTemplate without setting title, the :siteName placeholder resolves to an empty string. Setting titleTemplate to a fixed string, such as "Bark Docs", is entirely valid if you want every tab to show the same title regardless of the current page.

Site Description ​

The description field sets a site-wide <meta name="description"> fallback. Any page that provides its own description in frontmatter will use that value instead, so this setting only applies to pages where no frontmatter description has been supplied.

json
{
  "description": "A fast, lightweight documentation server for ASP.NET Core."
}

This is a practical way to ensure every page carries at least some meta description, without having to add frontmatter to every single file in your docs.

Language ​

The lang field sets the lang attribute on the root <html> element. It defaults to "en" if left unset, which is appropriate for most English-language documentation sites. For sites written in another language, or for multi-audience sites where a specific language tag helps screen readers and search engines, it is recommended to set it explicitly.

json
{
  "lang": "fr"
}

Language tag values follow the BCP 47 standard. Common values include "en", "fr", "de", "ja", "zh-CN", and "pt-BR".

Automatic Canonical and Social Meta ​

Bark automatically emits a canonical link and Open Graph / Twitter Card tags on every page. You do not need to configure any of these manually.

The canonical URL is derived from the request scheme, host, and page path. A page at /guide/installation/ on https://docs.example.com produces:

html
<link rel="canonical" href="https://docs.example.com/guide/installation/">

Open Graph and Twitter Card tags are generated from the same canonical URL, the page's own title and description, and your site settings:

html
<meta property="og:type" content="article">
<meta property="og:title" content="Installation">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://docs.example.com/guide/installation/">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Bark">
<meta property="og:locale" content="en">
<meta property="og:description" content="How to install Bark.">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="How to install Bark.">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://docs.example.com/site-og.png">
<meta name="twitter:image" content="https://docs.example.com/site-og.png">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Installation">

A few notes on how these are filled in:

  • og:site_name comes from your brand or title, and og:locale from lang.
  • The home page (/) uses og:type of website; all other pages use article, and article pages also carry an article:modified_time.
  • Description tags are omitted when the page has no description.

Social Preview Image ​

The preview image is resolved for each page in order: the page's own frontmatter image, then a site-wide image in config.json, then your brandImage. A relative path such as /og.png is turned into an absolute URL against the request origin for you.

json
{
  "image": "/site-og.png"
}

When an image is found, Bark also upgrades the Twitter card to summary_large_image. Without one, it stays at summary and the image tags are simply omitted. To set a preview per page, add image to that page's frontmatter (see Frontmatter Config).

Structured Data (JSON-LD) ​

Bark also emits a application/ld+json block so search engines can read your pages as structured data. The home page is described as a WebSite, and every other page as an Article with its title, description, image, and modified date. When a page has breadcrumbs, a BreadcrumbList is included as well.

There is nothing to configure. The block reflects the live request, and it carries the page nonce so it passes a strict Content Security Policy.

INFO

Canonical, Open Graph, Twitter Card, and JSON-LD are all generated from the live request, so they stay correct on their own. If you add matching tags through the head array below, yours appear alongside the automatic ones rather than replacing them.

Extra Head Tags ​

For anything that falls outside the fields above, the head array lets you inject arbitrary tags into <head> on every page. This is particularly useful for structured data, site-name Open Graph metadata, or any third-party initialization snippets.

Each entry in the array is an object with three fields:

Field Type Description
tag string The HTML tag name, for example "meta", "link", or "script".
attrs Record<string, string>? Attribute key-value pairs. Values are HTML-encoded automatically.
content string? Inner HTML for tags that wrap content, such as <script> or <style>. Void elements like <meta> and <link> do not use this field.

Here is a practical example that adds supplementary Open Graph fields and a structured data block:

json
{
  "head": [
    { "tag": "meta", "attrs": { "property": "og:site_name", "content": "Bark" } },
    { "tag": "meta", "attrs": { "property": "og:image", "content": "https://bark.example.com/og-image.png" } },
    {
      "tag": "script",
      "attrs": { "type": "application/ld+json" },
      "content": "{\"@context\":\"https://schema.org\",\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"name\":\"Bark\"}"
    }
  ]
}

Bark recognizes <meta>, <link>, and <base> as void elements and renders them without a closing tag. Every other tag receives an opening tag, the content value if provided, and a closing tag.

INFO

All entries in head are added to every page on your site. For per-page metadata such as individual descriptions and custom titles, please see Frontmatter Config.

A Complete Example ​

json
{
  "title": "Bark",
  "titleTemplate": ":title | :siteName",
  "description": "A fast, lightweight documentation server for ASP.NET Core.",
  "lang": "en",
  "head": [
    { "tag": "meta", "attrs": { "property": "og:site_name", "content": "Bark" } },
    {
      "tag": "script",
      "attrs": { "type": "application/ld+json" },
      "content": "{\"@context\":\"https://schema.org\",\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"name\":\"Bark\"}"
    }
  ]
}

Bark generates the canonical link, the full Open Graph and Twitter Card set (including og:site_name, og:locale, and og:image), and a JSON-LD block automatically on every page, so those are intentionally absent from this example. The head array is for anything beyond that, such as third-party verification tags or your own extra structured data.

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Last updated: 2026-07-31

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