Frontmatter

Frontmatter keeps page-specific decisions close to the page. Use it for titles, descriptions, sidebar order, layout, the page outline, edit links, and build output.

Ardo normalizes documented frontmatter once for route metadata, sidebars, search, redirects, sitemap, and LLM output. Invalid values are reported with the source file during production builds. Unknown fields remain compatible by default, but can be made visible or blocking in Configuration.

Basic Usage

---
title: My Page Title
description: A description for SEO
---
# Page Content

Your content here...

Available Options

title

• Type: string

The title of the page. Used in the browser tab and as the <h1> if not provided in content.

---
title: Getting Started
---

description

• Type: string

The description of the page. Used for SEO meta tags.

---
description: Learn how to get started with Ardo
---

Ardo also renders description as the visible lede under the page title. If the first body paragraph has the same normalized text, Ardo skips the lede to avoid showing the sentence twice.

lede

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Set lede: false when description should be metadata-only.

---
title: Getting Started
description: Learn how to get started with Ardo
lede: false
---

Social metadata

Markdown routes without their own meta export get generated browser, canonical, Open Graph, and Twitter metadata from frontmatter and site config.

---
title: Getting Started
description: Learn how to get started with Ardo
canonical: https://example.com/guide/getting-started
ogTitle: Start building with Ardo
ogDescription: A focused guide to Ardo projects
ogImage: /social/getting-started.png
ogType: article
twitterCard: summary_large_image
twitterDescription: A focused guide to Ardo projects
twitterImage: /social/getting-started-twitter.png
twitterTitle: Start building with Ardo
---

• canonical overrides the generated canonical URL and og:url.
• ogTitle, ogDescription, ogImage, and ogType control Open Graph tags.
• twitterTitle, twitterDescription, twitterImage, and twitterCard control Twitter Card tags.
• Relative canonical and image values are made absolute with siteUrl; without siteUrl, relative URL tags are omitted.

layout

• Type: "bare" | "default"
• Default: "default"

bare drops the sidebar and the page rail, as on a landing page, and the header shows search as an icon. default is the documentation layout with sidebar and outline. The home page at / always uses the bare layout.

---
layout: bare
---

sidebar

• Type: boolean | "leaf"
• Default: true

sidebar: false removes the page from the generated sidebar. The page still builds and stays reachable by link.

---
sidebar: false
---

Use sidebar: leaf on an index.md or index.mdx to show the containing directory as one link without auto-listing its children.

order

• Type: number

Controls the generated sidebar order for pages within the same directory. Items with order appear before unordered items; unordered items fall back to alphabetical sorting. The previous and next links at the end of a page follow the same order.

---
title: Getting Started
order: 1
---

Directory index metadata

When a route directory contains index.md or index.mdx, its frontmatter configures the generated directory group rendered by ArdoGeneratedSidebar.

---
title: Guide
order: 10
collapsed: false
---

• title sets the group label.
• order sorts the group among its sibling pages and groups. Top-level folders become sidebar sections instead; order those with sidebar.sectionOrder.
• collapsed sets the initial collapsed state for the group. A collapsed group still opens on the pages inside it.

outline

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Set outline: false to hide the outline of this page. Which heading levels the outline lists is a site-wide setting, markdown.toc.level in ardo.config.ts.

---
outline: false
---

editLink

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Whether to show the "Edit this page" link.

---
editLink: false
---

lastUpdated

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Whether to show the last updated time.

---
lastUpdated: false
---

Build Output Options

sitemap

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Exclude a Markdown route from the generated sitemap without hiding it from navigation.

---
title: Internal Migration Notes
sitemap: false
---

llms

• Type: boolean
• Default: true

Exclude a Markdown route from /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt. This is useful for pages that are valid docs for humans but noisy in a single-file model context, such as generated changelogs or large fixture references.

---
title: Fixture Catalog
llms: false
---

redirectFrom

• Type: string | string[]

Generate static redirects from old paths to this page. Use a string for one legacy path or an array for several old locations.

---
title: Configuration
redirectFrom:
  - /config
  - /guide/options
---

Ardo combines page-level redirects with the redirects option in ardo.config.ts and emits host-friendly redirect assets during production builds.

Home Page

Build the home page as a TSX route, app/routes/home.tsx, with ArdoHero and ArdoFeatures. A Markdown page can't render the hero, so frontmatter has no hero or feature fields. Components shows both with their props, and Getting Started has a complete home route.