diff --git a/incorporealcms/markdown.py b/incorporealcms/markdown.py
index 176516b..e3ae83c 100644
--- a/incorporealcms/markdown.py
+++ b/incorporealcms/markdown.py
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 """Process Markdown pages.
 
+With the project now being a SSG, most files we just let the web server serve
+as is, but .md files need to be processed with a Markdown parser, so a lot of this
+is our tweaks and customizations for pages my way.
+
 SPDX-FileCopyrightText: © 2025 Brian S. Stephan <bss@incorporeal.org>
 SPDX-License-Identifier: AGPL-3.0-or-later
 """
@@ -71,7 +75,7 @@ def parse_md(path: str):
 
     logger.debug("file metadata: %s", md.Meta)
 
-    page_name = get_meta_str(md, 'title') if md.Meta.get('title') else path
+    page_name = get_meta_str(md, 'title') if md.Meta.get('title') else instance_resource_path_to_request_path(path)
     page_title = f'{page_name} - {Config.TITLE_SUFFIX}' if page_name else Config.TITLE_SUFFIX
     logger.debug("title (potentially derived): %s", page_title)
 
diff --git a/tests/test_markdown.py b/tests/test_markdown.py
index 6a6dedd..8970049 100644
--- a/tests/test_markdown.py
+++ b/tests/test_markdown.py
@@ -7,7 +7,8 @@ import os
 from unittest.mock import patch
 
 from incorporealcms.markdown import (generate_parent_navs, handle_markdown_file_path,
-                                     instance_resource_path_to_request_path, request_path_to_breadcrumb_display)
+                                     instance_resource_path_to_request_path, parse_md,
+                                     request_path_to_breadcrumb_display)
 
 HERE = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
 os.chdir(os.path.join(HERE, 'instance/', 'pages/'))
@@ -104,3 +105,24 @@ def test_request_path_to_breadcrumb_display_patterns():
     assert request_path_to_breadcrumb_display('/foo/bar') == 'bar'
     assert request_path_to_breadcrumb_display('/foo/bar/') == 'bar'
     assert request_path_to_breadcrumb_display('/') == ''
+
+
+def test_parse_md_metadata():
+    """Test the direct results of parsing a markdown file."""
+    content, md, page_name, page_title, mtime = parse_md('more-metadata.md')
+    assert page_name == 'title for the page'
+    assert page_title == 'title for the page - example.org'
+
+
+def test_parse_md_metadata_forced_no_title():
+    """Test the direct results of parsing a markdown file."""
+    content, md, page_name, page_title, mtime = parse_md('forced-no-title.md')
+    assert page_name == ''
+    assert page_title == 'example.org'
+
+
+def test_parse_md_metadata_no_title_so_path():
+    """Test the direct results of parsing a markdown file."""
+    content, md, page_name, page_title, mtime = parse_md('subdir/index.md')
+    assert page_name == '/subdir/'
+    assert page_title == '/subdir/ - example.org'