How do I adjust the page title for different Section and Entry pages?

Question

Inside the default template that comes installed with Craft, the title of a page is set as:

<title>{% if title is defined %}{{ title }} - {% endif %}{{ siteName }}</title>

This works perfectly for the homepage and on pages where the {{ title }} variable is set. However for individual entries inside a channel, only the site name is used for the title.

I've tried to use the {{ entry.title }} variable instead, however in that case the title of the homepage is rendered as 'Homepage - {{ siteName }}'.

What's the best way to achieve the following page titles for the different sections?

Homepage: {{ siteName }}
Page: {{ title }} - {{ siteName }}
Entry: {{ entry.title }} - {{ siteName }}

Answer 1

The title var can be set in the child templates, that way you can fine-tune it for each section of your site.

Take a look at these default templates:

news/index.html:

{% set title = "News" %}

news/_entry.html:

{% set title = entry.title %}

_layout.html:

The main layout just checks if it has been defined or not:

{% if title is defined %}{{ title }} - {% endif %}{{ siteName }}

.

P.S. Embed templates might be confusing at first, but are really great, check out the docs.