Getting started

Complete Installation first. This example adds a title and description to one page, then outputs them from the layout.

Load the helper

In src/View/AppView.php, load the helper inside initialize():

public function initialize(): void {
    parent::initialize();
    $this->loadHelper('Meta.Meta', [
        'robots' => ['index' => true, 'follow' => true, 'archive' => true],
    ]);
}

The helper's default robots instructions are noindex,nofollow,noarchive. The example enables indexing for public pages. For private pages or staging sites, keep the defaults or set the appropriate instructions per page. Robots tags do not control access to the page.

Set the page values

At the start of a template, for example templates/Pages/home.php:

$this->Meta->setTitle('Welcome to our site');
$this->Meta->setDescription('News and updates from our team.');

The template renders before the layout, so these values are available when the layout builds the document head.

Output the tags once

In your layout, usually templates/layout/default.php, replace its existing <title>, charset, favicon, and robots output with:

echo $this->Meta->out();

Place this inside <head>. Leave your stylesheet and script output in place. Avoid a second title or description from the layout or the meta view block. If you retain $this->fetch('meta'), check that its tags do not duplicate the helper's output.

Open the page and inspect its HTML source. You should see one title, the page description, charset and favicon tags, and the robots instructions configured above. The helper escapes title and metadata values; pass ordinary text rather than pre-escaped HTML.

See Configuration and tags to pass page values from controllers, Social metadata for link previews, and Structured data for JSON-LD.