# Configure your site

The basic settings and configuration for your site reside in the `_config.yaml` file.

Example:

```yaml
### basic settings

# site properties and page defaults
title: Lab Website Template
subtitle: A template by the Greene Lab
description: An easy-to-use, flexible website template for labs, with automatic citations, GitHub tag imports, pre-built components, and more.
logo-text: false
header: images/background.jpg
footer: images/background.jpg
header-dark: false
footer-dark: false
proofer: false

# site social media and other links
links:
  email: jane.smith@your-lab.com
  orcid: 0000-0001-8713-9213
  google-scholar: ETJoidYAAAAJ
  github: your-lab
  twitter: YourLabHandle
  instagram: YourLabHandle
  youtube: YourLabChannel

### Jekyll settings to ignore
...
```

<table><thead><tr><th width="220.33333333333331">Parameter</th><th width="383">Description</th><th>Default</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><code>title</code></td><td><p>Title of your site. Appears in the tab title, in the header, and in <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=html+meta+tags">page metadata</a>.<br><br>Use a short version of your lab's name if you have one so it can fit nicely in these spots. Aim for less than 20 characters.</p><p></p><p>Tip: If your lab name is long, use an abbreviated version here, then display the full name at the top of your homepage.</p></td><td></td></tr><tr><td><code>subtitle</code></td><td>Appears in the header next to your site title, smaller and more subtle. Useful for slogans or affiliations.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td><code>description</code></td><td>Default description that will show under search engine results. Can be overridden on <a href="edit-pages">individual pages</a>.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td><code>show-title</code> /  <code>show-subtitle</code> </td><td>Whether to show your site title/subtitle next to your logo in the header. Set to <code>false</code> if your logo image already contains text that you don't want to be displayed twice. This does not remove your site title from the tab name, metadata, or anything else.</td><td><code>true</code></td></tr><tr><td><code>header</code> / <code>footer</code></td><td>Default background image for the header/footer. Can be overridden on <a href="edit-pages">individual pages</a>.</td><td>Solid color background</td></tr><tr><td><code>header-dark</code> / <code>footer-dark</code></td><td>Default header/footer dark/light mode. Can be overridden on <a href="edit-pages">individual pages</a>.</td><td><code>true</code></td></tr><tr><td><code>links</code></td><td>Social media links for your lab to show in the footer of every page, without any prefixes like <code>@</code>, <code>www.</code>, etc.<br><br>See <code>/_data/types.yaml</code> for what types of links are built-in or to add your own.</td><td></td></tr><tr><td><code>proofer</code></td><td><p>Whether to use <a href="https://github.com/gjtorikian/html-proofer">html-proofer</a> to check your site for broken links, images, and more. </p><p></p><p>If broken items are found, a <strong>warning</strong> is shown in your <a href="../../getting-started/preview-your-site#on-github-remotely">Actions workflow logs</a> or your <a href="../../getting-started/preview-your-site#on-your-computer-locally">console</a>. It is <strong>not</strong> a critical error that will prevent your site from building, because it is not perfect: there can be false positives/negatives.</p><p></p><p>It is <strong>disabled</strong> by default because it can add quite a bit of time to updating/building your remote or local previews.</p></td><td><code>false</code></td></tr></tbody></table>

{% hint style="info" %}
Headers/footers/sections have a solid color that overlays any background image to always maintain readability of text.
{% endhint %}