Customizing WordPress Page Titles with Custom Field Definitions

I don’t know about you, but the short title necessary to fit the page name in the list of pages across the top navigation bar, really chaps my butt.

You have to keep the page *name* small (like one or two words max), but that means the *title* is displayed with that one or two words. And before you write in to tell me there are plugins to override the browser title area for a page, let me mention, that’s not what chaps me. I mean the main title displayed on the page.

Let me give you an example you have probably seen: There is an ABOUT page, and even though you can stuff *About Cenay Nailor* in the browser title, only About is displayed on the actual page.

Like most programmers plagued by some stupid behavior, I came up with a way around it. Let me share that with you.

Add a custom field to the page (in my example, I named it customtitle) and place your more descriptive text here. The custom fields area is the section that appears below the page edit area. A sample screen shot is shown below.

Once you have added the customtitle to each page in your blog, then pop over to the theme editor and update the page.php (for most WordPress installations and themes) like so:

(Original line)

<h1>< ?php the_title(); ?></h1>

(Replace with)

<h1><?php $key="customtitle"; echo get_post_meta($post->ID, $key, true); ?></h1>

I also added the original line just below my new line, but changed the h1 to an h3 tag. This gives me custom text in the larger font, and the actual page title in the smaller header tag.

Hope this little tip helps all you WordPress bloggers out there that are just not satisfied with the standard features.

About The Author

Cenay Nailor is an Internet, Affiliate and Networking Marketing success coach with mad technical skills she loves sharing. Visit her blog and sign up for a weekly injection of Tech-Based Marketing help, sent right to your inbox. http://www.CenayNailor.com

About The Author

Dali Burgado, also known as "The Dali Blogger" teaches creative entrepreneurs how to carve a web presence that connects with their Inner Guru and their target audience. Her first online marketing love is SEO. She's an avid connector on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. When she's not coaching or teaching, she's tweaking sites for Search Engine Visibility, working on her PHP and Javascript coding skills, Singing Opera, or learning about gardening. Circle Dali on Google+