Settings

Overview

Most of Front Matter is configurable to your needs. In this part of the documentation all settings are explained.

Team settings and local settings

Since version 4 of Front Matter, Team settings got introduced. Teams settings allow you to have all settings on the project/solution level. You will be able to override them on user/local level (.vscode/settings.json).

The purpose of team settings is to share the global configuration of your CMS configuration. This way, your whole team can use the same tags/categories but apply their changes locally.

As you do not typically share your .vscode/settings.json configuration, we went for a frontmatter.json file on the root of your project/solution. The settings you provide in this JSON file are the same as you can configure on a local level. This allows you to easily copy, move settings from team to local level and vice versa.

Migrate local settings to team settings

To allow you to easily migrate already defined settings, you can run the Promote settings from local to team level command. The very first time, it will also ask you if there are settings that can be promoted.

Available settings

frontMatter.content.autoUpdateDate

Specify if you want to automatically update the modified date of your article/page.

• Type: boolean
• Default: false

frontMatter.content.defaultSorting

Specify the default sorting option for the content dashboard. You can use one of the values from the enum or define your own ID.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

Options:

• LastModifiedAsc
• LastModifiedDesc
• FileNameAsc
• FileNameDesc
• ID of your custom sorting option

frontMatter.content.draftField

Define the draft field you want to use to manage your content. Check in the docs

• Type: object

  • name: Define the type of field
  • type: boolean or choice
  • choices: Define the choices of the draft field string[]

• Default:

{
  "name": "draft",
  "type": "boolean"
}

frontMatter.content.fmHighlight

Specify if you want to highlight the Front Matter in the Markdown file.

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

frontMatter.content.pageFolders

This array of folders defines where the extension can find your content and create new content by running the create article command.

• Type: object[]
• Default: []

Properties:

• title: Give a title for the content folder path
• path: The path to the content folder, important is to use the [[workspace]] placeholder
• excludeSubdir: Optional, specify if you want to exclude subdirectories from the content folder. Default: false.

Important: [[workspace]] is a placeholder that the extension uses to replace the workspace path. The reason why we choose to use this, is because some do not keep the original folder name.

Sample:

{
  "frontMatter.content.pageFolders": [
    {
      "title": "Pages",
      "path": "[[workspace]]/content",
      "excludeSubdir": true
    },
    {
      "title": "Blog posts",
      "path": "[[workspace]]/content/posts"
    }
  ]
}

frontMatter.content.publicFolder

Specify the folder name where all your assets are located. For instance in Hugo this is the static folder.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

frontMatter.content.sorting

Define the sorting options for your dashboard content.

• Type: object[]
• Default: []

Properties:

• title: The title of the sorting option
• name: The name of the field to sort by (needs to be present in your content its front matter)
• order: The order of the sorting (ascending or descending). Option values to use: asc or desc.
• type: The type of field value. Option values to use: string, date.

Sample:

{
  "frontMatter.content.sorting": [
    {
      "title": "Date (asc)",
      "name": "date",
      "order": "asc",
      "type": "date"
    },
    {
      "title": "Date (desc)",
      "name": "date",
      "order": "desc",
      "type": "date"
    }
  ]
}

frontMatter.content.wysiwyg

Specifies if you want to enable/disable the What You See, Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) markdown controls.

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

frontMatter.custom.scripts

Specify the path to a Node.js script to execute. The current file path will be provided as an argument.

• Type: object[]
• Default: []

Sample:

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

Info: Check the create your own custom scripts section for more information.

frontMatter.dashboard.mediaSnippet

Specify the a snippet for your custom media insert markup.

"frontMatter.dashboard.mediaSnippet": [
  "{{< caption \"{mediaUrl}\" \"Description\" >}}"
]

Important: Use the {mediaUrl} placeholder where you want the relative image path to be inserted. Check placeholders for more information.

frontMatter.dashboard.openOnStart

Specify if you want to open the dashboard when you start VS Code.

• Type: boolean | null
• Default: null

frontMatter.framework.id

Specify the ID of your static site generator or framework you are using for your website.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

frontMatter.media.defaultSorting

Specify the default sorting option for the media dashboard.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

Options:

• LastModifiedAsc
• LastModifiedDesc
• FileNameAsc
• FileNameDesc

frontMatter.panel.freeform

Specifies if you want to allow yourself from entering unknown tags/categories in the tag picker (when enabled, you will have the option to store them afterwards).

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

frontMatter.preview.host

Specify the host URL (example: http://localhost:1313) to be used when opening the preview.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

frontMatter.preview.pathName

Specify the path you want to add after the host and before your slug. This can be used for instance to include the year/month like: yyyy/MM. The date will be generated based on the article its date field value.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

Important: As the value will be formatted with the article's date, it will try to convert all characters you enter. In case you wan to skip some characters or all of them, you need to wrap that part between two single quotes. Example: "'blog/'yyyy/MM" will result in: blog/2021/08.

frontMatter.site.baseURL

Specify the base URL of your site, this will be used for SEO checks.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

Info: Example for this site it would be: https://frontmatter.codes.

frontMatter.taxonomy.alignFilename

Align the filename with the new slug when it gets generated.

• Type: boolean
• Default: false

frontMatter.taxonomy.categories

Specifies the categories which can be used in the Front Matter.

• Type: string[]
• Default: []

frontMatter.taxonomy.commaSeparatedFields

Specify the fields names that Front Matter should treat as a comma-separated array.

• Type: string[]
• Default: []

Info: As some site generators expect arrays in YAML to be comma-separated like Pelican. You can use this setting to define which of the front matter properties should be treated as an comma-separated array.

frontMatter.taxonomy.contentTypes

Specify the type of contents you want to use for your articles/pages/etc. Make sure the type is correctly set in your front matter.

• Type: array, null
• Default: check default content type

frontMatter.taxonomy.customTaxonomy

Specify the custom taxonomy field data.

• Type: array[object]
• Default: []

Sample:

"frontMatter.taxonomy.customTaxonomy": [
    {
      "id": "customTaxonomy",
      "options": [
        "Option 1",
        "Option 2",
        "Option 3"
      ]
    }
  ]

Info: Check the custom taxonomy section for more information.

frontMatter.taxonomy.dateField

This setting is used to define the publishing date field of your articles.

• Type: string
• Default: date

Important: if you would use another field in your content types, be sure to remap this setting.

frontMatter.taxonomy.dateFormat

Specify the date format for your articles. Check date-fns formating for more information.

• Type: string
• Default: iso

frontMatter.taxonomy.frontMatterType

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

• Type: enum: YAML | TOML
• Default: YAML

frontMatter.taxonomy.indentArrays

Specify if arrays in front matter of the markdown files are indented.

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

frontMatter.taxonomy.modifiedField

This setting is used to define the modified date field of your articles.

• Type: string
• Default: lastmod

Important: if you would use another field in your content types, be sure to remap this setting.

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"]
}

• Type: string[]
• Default: []

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoContentLengh

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).

• Type: number
• Default: 1760

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionField

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

• Type: string
• Default: description

Important: if you would use another field in your content types, be sure to remap this setting.

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoDescriptionLength

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

• Type: number
• Default: 160

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoSlugLength

Specifies the optimal slug length for SEO (set to -1 to turn it off).

• Type: number
• Default: 75

frontMatter.taxonomy.seoTitleLength

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

• Type: number
• Default: 60

frontMatter.taxonomy.slugPrefix

Specify a prefix for the slug.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

frontMatter.taxonomy.slugSuffix

Specify a suffix for the slug.

• Type: string
• Default: ""

frontMatter.taxonomy.tags

Specifies the tags which can be used in the Front Matter.

• Type: string[]
• Default: []

frontMatter.templates.folder

Specify the folder to use for your article templates.

• Type: string
• Default: .frontmatter/templates

Important: In version 5 of Front Matter, we moved the default location from .templates to .frontmatter/templates.

frontMatter.templates.prefix

Specify the prefix you want to add for your new article filenames.

• Type: string
• Default: yyyy-MM-dd

Removed settings

frontMatter.content.folders

This setting has been deprecated since version 3.1.0 in favor of the newly introduced frontMatter.content.pageFolders setting.