Add A Site Description To Office 365 Sharepoint Online 2013 Public Sites

Yep – removing the site description was another of those 2013 public site "upgrades"…. Has MSFT ever heard of SEO?? The 2010 asp placeholder for this element doesn't work in 2013 sites, and there probably isn't a predefined one, so if you want to add a site description below your site title, you'll have to hard code it in manually.

For that we'll need to:

• Open the site in Sharepoint Designer (2010 or 2013).
• Open All Files » _catalogs » masterpage and open the html file that's linked to the master page you're using (eg oslo.html)
• Hunt down this element: <h1 id="pageTitle" class="ms-core-pageTitle">

• AFTER its closing h1 tag, add the tag and description you want to use eg <h2>My site description </h2>
• TIP: If you want to be able to style the description (and who wouldn't?), add a class eg <h2 class="desc">…….
• Save the file
• To publish it, go to site settings » galleries » master page and layouts and click "publish a major version" from the context menu.

The Result:

Now you can both let site visitors know what your site is about AND make it a little more relevant and appealing to search engines. If you have any questions, please ask them in my forum »