Hi Mark

Within each page template you could either check to see if a value for your custom meta description property exists on the page and if not get a reference to the homepage content item and read the fallback value from there, or if you might want to fall back to the page directly above for the value, and then if that is blank the page above that, all the way back up to the homepage, then you can write out the property with 'recurse' set to be true... and Umbraco will do that for you!

Option 1 - check if value exists

@{
var customMetaDescription = "";
if (Model.Content.HasValue("customMetaDescription"){
    customMetaDescription = Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription");
}
else {
    var homePage = Model.Content.Root;
    customMetaDescription = homepage.Content.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription");
}
}
<meta name="description" value="@customMetaDescription" />

or

Option 2 - recursive property

<meta name="description" value="@(Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription",true))" />

so much less type in Option2! but if you have a page within a page within a page, it will get the value from it's ancestors and not necessarily the homepage but that might be a better more relevant metadescription.

regards

Marc

Bravo Marc!

I did have to edit your code slightly for the first option, see else statement

@{
    var customMetaDescription = "";
    if (Model.Content.HasValue("customMetaDescription")){
      customMetaDescription = Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription");
    }
    else {
      var homePage = Model.Content.Parent;
      customMetaDescription = homePage.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription");
    }
}

Hi Mark

(ahh yes Root is the new syntax, I think it is 'Site' in your version of Umbraco)

so

var homePage = Model.Content.Site;

which is just a convenience for:

var homePage = Model.Content.AncestorOrSelf(1);

Parent will only read from the page above, which from your screenshot is probably fine, but if you ever create a page beneath a page, then using either of the above, should still find the homepage!

regards

Marc

Actually in 8 its extremely simple:

<meta name="description" value="@Model.Value("customMetaDescription", fallback: Fallback.ToAncestors)" />

Yes, @claushingebjerge.... but this is V7... recursively accessing the property is actually also extremely simple in V7 :-P - (Option 2 above)

eg

<meta name="description" value="@(Model.Content.GetPropertyValue<string>("customMetaDescription",true))" />

Oh sorry, didnt see it was 7. Well theres an answer for both 7 and 8 now :)

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