The HTML <title> element is used to provide a title for an HTML document. The HeadTitle helper allows you to programmatically create and store the title for later retrieval and output. The HeadTitle helper is a concrete implementation of the Placeholder helper. It overrides the toString() method to enforce generating a <title> element, and adds a headTitle() method for quick and easy setting and aggregation of title elements. The signature for that method is headTitle($title, $setType = 'APPEND'); by default, the value is appended to the stack (aggregating title segments), but you may also specify either 'PREPEND' (place at top of stack) or 'SET' (overwrite stack). You may specify a title tag at any time. A typical usage would have you setting title segments for each level of depth in your application: site, controller, action, and potentially resource. getRequest(); $this->headTitle($request->getActionName()) ->headTitle($request->getControllerName()); // setting the site in the title; possibly in the layout script: $this->headTitle('Zend Framework'); // setting a separator string for segments: $this->headTitle()->setSeparator(' / '); ]]> When you're finally ready to render the title in your layout script, simply echo the helper: / / Zend Framework --> headTitle() ?> ]]>