Blog Post Front Matter Guide

Complete Example with All Fields

Here’s a complete example of what you can add to your blog post front matter:

---
layout: post
title: "Your Blog Post Title"
date: 2025-12-22
author: "Sachin Kalsi"
description: "A compelling 150-160 character description for SEO and social sharing"
image: "/assets/images/your-post-image.jpg"  # Optional: For social sharing
tags: 
  - Python
  - NLP
  - Machine Learning
  - Unicode
categories:
  - Tutorial
  - Data Science
excerpt: "Optional excerpt that appears on blog listing page (if not provided, first paragraph is used)"
last_modified_at: 2025-12-23  # Optional: When you last updated the post
---

Required Fields (Minimum)

---
layout: post
title: "Your Post Title"
date: 2025-12-22
author: "Sachin Kalsi"
description: "SEO description"
---

Optional Fields Explained

description (Recommended for SEO)

• What: 150-160 character description
• Used for: Meta tags, social sharing, search results
• Example: "Learn about Unicode normalization and text encoding in Python"

image (Optional but Recommended)

• What: Path to an image for social sharing (Open Graph/Twitter Cards)
• Best size: 1200x630px
• Example: "/assets/images/unicode-guide.jpg"
• Note: If not provided, uses default OG image

tags (Optional)

• What: Array of topic tags
• Used for: Categorization, filtering (if you add tag pages later)
• Example: ```yaml tags:
  • Python
  • NLP
  • Tutorial ```

categories (Optional)

• What: Array of categories
• Used for: Broader categorization
• Example: ```yaml categories:
  • Tutorial
  • Data Science ```

excerpt (Optional)

• What: Custom excerpt for blog listing page
• Note: If not provided, Jekyll uses first paragraph automatically

last_modified_at (Optional)

• What: Date when post was last updated
• Format: YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
• Used for: SEO (shows Google when content was updated)

Where Social Links Go

IMPORTANT: Social links (LinkedIn, GitHub, etc.) are NOT in individual blog posts!

They go in _config.yml (site-wide settings):

# In _config.yml
author:
  name: "Sachin Kalsi"
  linkedin: "https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkalsi/"
  github: "https://github.com/sachinkalsi"
  medium: "https://medium.com/@sachinkalsi"
  youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/@ml-simplified/"

These are automatically used in:

• SEO meta tags
• Structured data (JSON-LD)
• Social sharing
• Site header/footer

Quick Reference