Front matter tells Jekyll how to render Markdown pages on your site. It defines the page’s title, layout, address, and other metadata. If a page doesn’t have this information, Jekyll won’t render it.

This page describes:

  • How to write basic front matter.
  • Some common metadata elements used in front matter.
  • Where to find other resources to learn more advanced front matter use cases.

Basic front matter structure

Front matter goes at the top of each Markdown page. Three dashes (---) separate the front matter from the rest of the document.

For example, a Markdown document with front matter might look like this:

<!-- START OF PAGE -->

---
title: My page title
---

<!-- MAIN CONTENT -->

Common front matter elements

You can add any metadata you want to a page’s front matter. Some common, helpful metadata elements include:

YAML element Description
title The page title.
permalink The page’s address. The permalink element lets you link to this page from other pages in your site.
parent The page’s “parent.” “Children” pages are subpages of their parent page.
last_modified_date The page’s last modified date. This lets readers know when you last updated a page.

For example, the front matter section of a page in your site’s “Tutorials” section might look like this:

---
title: Tutorial example 1
permalink: /tutorials/example1/
parent: Tutorials
last_modified_date: 2025-03-24
---

<!-- MAIN CONTENT -->

Advanced front matter uses

You can reference metadata defined in one page’s front matter from any other page in your site. This expands your site’s capabilities to:

  • Create template HTML files to include on different pages.
  • Define data once and use it many times.
  • Generate page content dynamically.

See Jekyll’s front matter documentation to learn more.

See the Liquid template language reference to learn how to add logic to your documentation using metadata.

To learn more about your Jekyll theme’s specific front matter options, see your theme’s documentation.

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