# There should be a site description in site config

**URL:** https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199
**Category:** feature
**Created:** [January 19, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199 "2025-01-19T20:12:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![will](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/will/32/18403_2.png) [@will](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/will)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199/1 "2025-01-19T20:12:26Z")

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Along with a corresponding field in language config in site config.

It’s consistent with pages having a description. It would be useful to a lot of sites, e.g. [https://www.nytimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com): “Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos”. Atom feeds have a feed “subtitle” element, and RSS feeds have a feed “description” element.

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### Author: ![tyco](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/tyco/32/23754_2.png) [@tyco](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/tyco)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2025, 1:24pm UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199/2 "2025-01-20T13:24:44Z")

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In Jekyll, description is a top level item. In Hugo, you use Params.

> [@Why is site description not a site variable?](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/why-is-site-description-not-a-site-variable/36310):
>
> What was the decision behind having .Site.Title as a Site Variable and not .Site.Description as well?

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### Author: ![Heracles](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/heracles/32/19379_2.png) [@Heracles](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/Heracles)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 1:44am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199/3 "2025-01-21T01:44:35Z")

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In terms of consistency, @will has a point here. It’s unclear from the documentation why `.Site.Copyright` is a “root” method, while description is a params method. Both could be argued that require translation in a multiple language setup, and both would make sense to be overriden on a page level.

That “inconsistency” occurs in the default templates, for example there’s mention of `site.Params.description` in [opengraph.html](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/blob/master/tpl/tplimpl/embedded/templates/opengraph.html). In contrast, within [rss.xml](https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/blob/master/tpl/tplimpl/embedded/templates/_default/rss.xml) only the page title is used where the description would be expected, where as copyright is used.

Would be glad to provide a PR for the latter if that’s welcome from @bep and mantainers, but overall it seems there’s some legacy reasoning that we’re missing here.

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### Author: ![will](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.gohugo.io/will/32/18403_2.png) [@will](https://discourse.gohugo.io/u/will)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2025, 3:39am UTC](https://discourse.gohugo.io/t/there-should-be-a-site-description-in-site-config/53199/4 "2025-02-06T03:39:56Z")

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Yes, exactly. The presence of a site variable means that themes can be designed with site descriptions in mind, not just HTML, but other formats and data like RSS, Atom, JSON-LD, and HTML microdata.
