Advanced Post Features

This post demonstrates several post-level frontmatter fields that control how a post appears in listings, how it behaves in search engines, and what UI features are active.

Last Modified Timestamp

The lastmod field marks when a post was last meaningfully updated. Look at the header above — it shows an “Updated” line below the publication date.

---
date: 2024-01-01      # original publication date
lastmod: 2025-06-10   # last significant update
---

lastmod also populates the dateModified field in the post’s JSON-LD schema, which search engines use to assess freshness.

Hero Image

The image field sets a hero/thumbnail image used in two places:

1. Open Graph meta tag — controls what image appears when the post is shared on social media
2. JSON-LD schema — image property in the BlogPosting schema

---
image: /assets/img/11.jpg
---

The path should be relative to public/. For Open Graph, recommended dimensions are 1200 × 630 px. The template also auto-generates an OG image at /og/blog/{slug}.png if site.og.enabled is true — the image field overrides that.

Reading Progress Bar

A thin bar at the top of the viewport fills as you scroll through the post. It is controlled by site.features.progressBar (enabled by default). The bar uses --global-theme-color so it automatically follows your configured accent colour.

To disable it for the whole site:

// src/config/site.ts
features: {
  progressBar: false,
}

There is no per-post opt-out; it’s a global feature toggle.

Social Share Buttons

Below the post body you’ll find sharing buttons for X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook, and email. They appear when site.features.socialShare is true (the default).

The native Web Share API is used on mobile browsers that support it, falling back to individual share URLs on desktop.

To disable sharing site-wide:

features: {
  socialShare: false,
}

Pinned Posts

Setting pinned: true moves a post to the top of the blog listing regardless of date. The sortPosts() utility sorts pinned posts first, then by date descending.

---
pinned: true
---

Use sparingly — pinned posts always appear above newer content, which can surprise readers.

Table of Contents

The TOC sidebar is visible on desktop when the post has h2/h3 headings and toc: true (the default). It auto-highlights the current section as you scroll.

---
toc: false   # hide the TOC for short or non-structured posts
---

The TOC.astro component is only rendered when the Astro build provides at least one heading.

Draft Posts

Posts with draft: true are completely excluded from:

• Blog listings and pagination
• The search index (Pagefind)
• The RSS feed
• The sitemap

They still build to HTML and are accessible at their direct URL, making them useful for staging content before a public announcement.

---
draft: true
---

A companion file src/content/posts/draft-example.md in this repo has draft: true — you won’t find it in the listing above.

Hidden Posts

Posts with hidden: true are excluded from listings and RSS but are accessible via direct URL. Use this for posts that are linked from external sources but should not appear in the main archive.

---
hidden: true
---

Unlike draft: true, hidden posts are indexed by Pagefind (they appear in search results). A companion file src/content/posts/hidden-example.md demonstrates this.

Related Posts

Set relatedPosts: true to show a “Related Posts” section below the post body. The algorithm ranks posts by Jaccard similarity on their tag sets — posts with the most tags in common appear first.

---
relatedPosts: true
tags: [physics, quantum]   # needs at least one matching tag on other posts
---

Robots Override

Override the robots meta tag for a specific post — useful for disabling indexing on pages like staging previews:

---
robots: 'noindex, nofollow'
---

The default is index, follow (or noindex, nofollow when draft: true is set).

Full Frontmatter Reference

---
title: Required — post title
date: 2025-01-01           # required — publication date
description: Optional      # used in meta tags and listings
tags: [tag1, tag2]
categories: [cat1]
math: false                # enable KaTeX rendering
toc: true                  # show table of contents sidebar
relatedPosts: false        # show related posts section
pinned: false              # pin to top of listing
hidden: false              # hide from listings (still accessible)
draft: false               # exclude from all output
robots: ~                  # override robots meta (optional)
lastmod: 2025-06-10        # last modified date (optional)
image: /assets/img/...     # hero image for OG + JSON-LD (optional)
# CDN widget flags (all optional, all default false):
mermaid: false
chart_js: false
echarts: false
vega: false
plotly: false
pseudocode: false
typograms: false
tikzjax: false
map: false
img_comparison: false
code_diff: false
gallery: false
disqus: false
# Distill layout (optional):
distill: false
distillAuthors: []
bibliography: ~
citation_key: ~
---