Dynamic meta description and keyword tags for your MasterPages
- by Aamir Hasan
Today we're going to look at a technique for dynamically inserting
meta tags into your master pages. By taking control of the head tag and
inserting your own HtmlMeta you can easily customise these tags.Might
have noticed that when you create a new master page in visual studio
your <head> tag gets decorated with a runat="server" attribute.Asp.net
doesn't add this kind of decoration to any other html tags (although
you are free to add it if you want). So what makes the head tag special?By
adding the runat="server" you're giving actually converting the control
into a HtmlHead control. That doesn't particularly matter for this
tutorial other than to note that given a reference to the head control
you get all the extras that come with asp.net controls such as access to
its controls collection.The HtmlMeta control lets us wrap
up <meta> tags via asp.net code. To add a meta description we need
to create an instance, set the name property, the content property, and
then add it to the head: asp.net using (C#)protected
void Page_Init(object sender, EventArgs e){ // Add meta
description tag HtmlMeta metaDescription = new HtmlMeta();
metaDescription.Name = "Description"; metaDescription.Content =
"Short, unique and keywords rich page description.";
Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaDescription); // Add meta
keywords tag HtmlMeta metaKeywords = new HtmlMeta();
metaKeywords.Name = "Keywords"; metaKeywords.Content =
"selected,page,keywords"; Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaKeywords);}asp.net
( VB.NET )Protected Sub Page_Init(ByVal sender As Object,
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Init ' Add meta description
tag Dim metaDescription As HtmlMeta = New HtmlMeta()
metaDescription.Name = "Description" metaDescription.Content =
"Short, unique and keywords rich page description."
Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaDescription) ' Add meta keywords
tag Dim metaKeywords As HtmlMeta = New HtmlMeta()
metaKeywords.Name = "Keywords" metaKeywords.Content =
"selected,page,keywords" Page.Header.Controls.Add(metaKeywords)End
Sub
