Setting the Title tag

Typo3 automatically creates the <title> tag containing the sitename: page title.

But, I wanted to include the subtitle in the tag so that I can have a longer <title> that is descriptive and keyword rich. So, the page <title> tag should go something like this:

<title> Site name: Page title – Page Subtitle </title>

To accomplish this, add the following to your template:

#Title tag extras:
config.noPageTitle = 2
page.headerData.20 = TEXT
page.headerData.20.value = my Site Name
page.headerData.20.wrap = <title>|:
page.headerData.30 = TEXT
page.headerData.30.field = title
page.headerData.40 = TEXT
page.headerData.40.field = subtitle
page.headerData.40.wrap = – |
page.headerData.40.if.isTrue.field = subtitle
page.headerData.50 = TEXT
page.headerData.50.value = </title>

config.noPageTitle = 2 suppresses Typo3’s <title> tag creation (setting it equal to 1 tells Typo3 to create the title with only the site name, resulting in two <title> tags which I understand does terrible things to you in the search engine rankings.)

The rest of the lines describe the construction of the <title> tag. So, if your page title is “My Page Title” and the subtitle is “My Page Subtitle”, the <title> tag will look like this:

<title>my Site Name: My Page Title – My Page Subtitle</title>

and in the browser you will see

my Site Name: My Page Title – My Page Subtitle

Check out Learner’s Village product The Secrets of Influence, to see this in action!

Future work: I’d like to find out how to get the site name automatically (something like, “page.HeaderData.20.field = sitename”) so that it is not hard coded in the template (then I only have to change the site name in one place and I can use the same template for multiple websites)