Front Matter is an essential Visual Studio Code extension when you want to manage the markdown pages of your static sites.

This VSCode extension simplifies working with your markdown articles' front matter when using a static site generator like Hugo, Jekyll, Hexo, NextJs, Gatsby, and many more... For example, you can keep a list of used tags, categories and add/remove them from your article with the extension.

The extension will automatically verify if your title and description are SEO compliant. If this would not be the case, it will give you a warning.

If you see something missing in your article creation flow, please feel free to reach out.

Version 2

In version v2.0.0 we released the newly redesigned sidebar panel with improved SEO support. This extension makes it the only extension to manage your Markdown pages for your static sites in Visual Studio Code.

Table of Contents

The panel

The Front Matter panel allows you to perform most of the extension actions by just a click on the button and it shows the SEO statuses of your title, description, and more.

Initially, this panel has been created to make it easier to add tags and categories to your articles as the current VSCode multi-select is not optimal to use.

To leverage most of the capabilities of the extension. SEO information and everyday actions like slug optimization, updating the date, and publish/drafting the article.

The panel consists of the following sections:

SEO Status

Actions

Metadata: Keywords, Tags, Categories

Info: By default, the tags/categories picker allows you to insert existing and none tags/categories. When you enter a none existing tag/category, the panel shows an add + icon in front of that button. This functionality allows you to store this tag/category in your settings. If you want to disable this feature, you can do that by setting the frontMatter.panel.freeform setting to false.

Other actions

At the bottom of the panel you can find the following actions:

Custom actions

Since version 1.15.0, the extension allows you to create your own custom actions, by running Node.js scripts from your project. In order to use this functionality, you will need to configure the frontMatter.custom.scripts setting for your project.

Once a custom action has been configured, it will appear on the Front Matter panel.

The current workspace-, file-path, and front matter data will be passed as an argument. In your script fetch these arguments as follows:

const arguments = process.argv;

if (arguments && arguments.length > 0) {
  const workspaceArg = arguments[2]; // The workspace path
  const fileArg = arguments[3]; // The file path
  const frontMatterArg = arguments[4]; // Front matter data

  console.log(`The content returned for your notification.`);
}

A sample file can be found here: script-sample.js

The output of the script will be passed as a notification, and it allows you to copy the output.

Creating articles from templates

By default, the extension looks for files stored in a .templates folder that should be located in your website project's root.

Info: You can overwrite the path by specifying it with the frontMatter.templates.folder setting.

When adding files in the folder, you'll be able to run the Front Matter: New article from template from a command or explorer menu. It will present you with the article template options once you pick one and specify the title. It creates the file and updates its front matter.

Info: By default, the extension will create articles with a yyyy-MM-dd prefix. If you do not want that or change the date format, you can update the frontMatter.templates.prefix setting.

Syntax highlighting for Hugo Shortcodes

Available commands:

Front Matter: Create <tag | category>

Creates a new <tag | category> and allows you to include it into your post automatically

Inserts a selected <tags | categories> into the front matter of your article/post/... - When using this command, the Front Matter panel opens and focuses on the specified type.

Info: This experience changed in version 1.11.0.

Front Matter: Export all tags & categories to your settings

Export all the already used tags & categories in your articles/posts/... to your user settings.

Front Matter: Remap or remove tag/category in all articles

This command helps you quickly update/remap or delete a tag or category in your markdown files. The extension will ask you to select the taxonomy type (tag or category), the old taxonomy value, and the new one (leave the input field blank to remove the tag/category).

Info: Once the remapping/deleting process completes. Your VSCode settings update with all new taxonomy tags/categories.

Front Matter: Set current date

Update the date property of the current article/post/... to the current date & time.

Optional: if you want, you can specify the date property format by adding your settings' preference. Settings key: frontMatter.taxonomy.dateFormat. Check date-fns formatting for more information on which patterns you can use.

Front Matter: Set lastmod date

Update the lastmod (last modified) property of the current article/post/... to the current date & time.

note: Uses the same date format settings key as current date: frontMatter.taxonomy.dateFormat.

Front Matter: Generate slug based on article title

This command generates a clean slug for your article. It removes known stop words, punctuations, and special characters.

Example:

title: Just a sample page with a title
slug: sample-page-title

You can also specify a prefix and suffix, which can be added to the slug if you want. Use the following settings to do this: frontMatter.taxonomy.slugPrefix and frontMatter.taxonomy.slugSuffix. By default, both options are not provided and will not add anything to the slug.

Info: At the moment, the extension only supports English stopwords.

Usage

• Start by opening the command prompt:
  • Windows: ⇧+ctrl+P
  • Mac: ⇧+⌘+P
• Use one of the commands from above

Where is the data stored?

The tags and categories are stored in the project VSCode user settings. You can find them back under: .vscode/settings.json.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.tags": [],
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.categories": []
}

Extension settings

The extension has more settings that allow you to configure it to your needs further. Here is a list of settings that you can set:

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoTitleLength

Specifies the optimal title length for SEO (set to -1 to turn it off). Default value: 60.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.seoTitleLength": 60
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionLength

Specifies the optimal description length for SEO (set to -1 to turn it off). Default value: 160.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionLength": 160
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoContentLength

Specifies the optimal minimum length for your articles. Between 1,760 words – 2,400 is the absolute ideal article length for SEO in 2021. (set to -1 to turn it off).

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.seoContentLength": 1760
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionLength

Specifies the name of the SEO description field for your page. Default is description.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionField": "description"
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.frontMatterType

Specify which Front Matter language you want to use. The extension supports YAML (default) and TOML.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.frontMatterType": "YAML"
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.indentArrays

Specify if arrays in the front matter are indented. Default: true. If you do not want to indent the array values, you can update it with the following setting change:

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.indentArrays": false
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.noPropertyValueQuotes

Specify the property names of which you want to remove the quotes in the output value. Warning: only use this when you know what you are doing. If you're going to, for instance, remove the quotes from the date property, you can add the following:

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.noPropertyValueQuotes": ["date"]
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.dateField

Specifies the date field name to use in your Front Matter. Default value: date.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.dateField": "date"
}

frontMatter.taxonomy.modifiedField

Specifies the modified date field name to use in your Front Matter. Default value: lastmod.

{
  "frontMatter.taxonomy.modifiedField": "lastmod"
}

frontMatter.custom.scripts

Allows you to specify a title and script path (starting relative from the root of your project). These values will be used to create custom actions on the Front Matter panel. Default value: [].

{
  "frontMatter.custom.scripts": [{
    "title": "Generate social image",
    "script": "./scripts/social-img.js",
    "nodeBin": "~/.nvm/versions/node/v14.15.5/bin/node"
  }]
}

Important: When the command execution would fail when it cannot find the node command. You are able to specify your path to the node app. This is for instance required when using nvm.

Feedback / issues / ideas

Please submit them via creating an issue in the project repository: issue list.