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WordPress: How to enable HTML in post titles
WordPress doesn’t allow you to embed HTML in your posts’s titles. In fact, this is not a WordPress problem, it’s more a lack of usability in Kubrick, the default WP theme. So, unless you’re following Anne’s A header should not be a link, stupid! logic, there is no way to embed code in your posts’s titles without breaking the title attributes of a certain amount of links, thus making your pages invalid.
See the big header above this text? Notice those small dots under HTML
? That’s right — this post’s title contains an acronym element. Now, hover your mouse over the header, and check the tooltip that shows up. Indeed, I don’t want no <a href="/blah/foo" title="Permanent link: How to enable <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym> in post titles">link</a>–evil to happen to you, my dear visitor.
Can we get to the point or what?
Here’s an excerpt from the current Kubrick index.php template file.
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> <strong>|</strong> <?php edit_post_link('Edit','','<strong>|</strong>'); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>Obviously, this code displays the posts that match the queries specified by the user. We can enable HTML in post titles by replacing this with something among the lines of the following:
<?php
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$mj_title = get_the_title();
$mj_title_stripped = strip_tags($mj_title);
?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php echo $mj_title_stripped; ?>"><?php echo $mj_title; ?></a></h2>
<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
</div>
<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> <strong>|</strong> <?php edit_post_link('Edit','','<strong>|</strong>'); ?> <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>Note how we avoid to use the the_title() function, by echoing the appropriate variable instead. That way, we gain much more control over how post titles are displayed depending on their context.
Note: You might have to make similar changes to your other post templates as well, ’cause right now only pages displayed using the index.php template won’t be messed up. :) Here are the files that should be edited when you’re using the default theme: archive.php, search.php, single.php, and of course index.php)
I hope this helps you, Frenzie, and I certainly hope this article is of use for other people as well.
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- Semicolon: Safe Title: a WordPress plugin:
Safe Title: a WordPress plugin
Here’s an amusing hack to fix a niggling problem in the WordPress default theme. I came up with this soon after I started using WordPress, but I recently noticed that this small annoyance had generated a discussion on mathibus.com. My fully automatic solution is now ready for a waiting world.- Trackback made on June 17th, 2005 @ 8:53 am
Well, you spared me some time as I would have written a tag-stripper myself (true, little work, but still.) :)
To which I should add, I was more thinking like
the_title('stripped').Frenzie, that’s the way to go for the WordPress dev team if you ask me. Something like replacing the current
the_title()function inwp-includes/template-functions-post.phpwith this one:function the_title($before = '', $after = '', $echo = true, $strip = false) {$title = get_the_title();
if ( strlen($title) > 0 ) {
$title = apply_filters(’the_title’, $before . $title . $after, $before, $after);
if ($strip)
$title = strip_tags($title);
if ($echo)
echo $title;
else
return $title;
}
}
You could then use
the_title('', '', true, true);toechothe stripped version of the post title.Following up on that recent link of yours, I think I’ll file this as a WP bug. Something like this should definitely be
built-insupported by WordPress.Still, using
ACRONYMfor HTML seems totally backwards and you might have better not marked it up at all. I’m also wondering what this has to do with the header should not be a link logic.The problem is mostly the
TITLEelement I guess. That’s why I’m storing two fields at the moment. One that is parsed everywhere as if it wasapplication/xml(in the backend) and one that is parsed everywhere as if it wastext/plain(again, in the backend).Wow nice trick. I’ve never had to have HTML tags in header links. I’ve never used the
titlefor links. If it’s all going to be the same information, why bother have a title for a header link? Nice little trick though.Anne, nah. I in fact used to use
ABBRexclusively, but I later allowedACRONYMelements too, becaus of the distinction between abbreviations and acronyms.Hmmm… Good point. Now that I come to think of it, this hasn’t got much to do with that. I must’ve been thinking , but of course a link like
<a href="/foo/bar">Permalink</a>could just as well have atitleattribute with the post title embedded. Stupid.Very good point. However, this is not just a case of asking yourself why — the default WordPress theme is doing this, so the fact is thousands of sites are too! Everybody can choose not to use the
titleattribute for certain links (i.e. tweaking the WP template files a bit), but as long as it’s hardcoded, a lot of people won’t.Mathias, I just noticed
wp_title, which seems to do the same thing. Makes me wonder if they shouldn’t work towards a more unified function for this stuff (expanding a bit on either one)… but as you are more familiar with the WordPress code and the bug system I leave that all to you. :)I’m afraid that’s incorrect, Frenzie. Though the page on the codex states ,
wp_title()doesn’t work inside The Loop. (On the main page, for example, it won’t return anything when used in the post loop.)I would agree, if the
wp_title()function indeed worked inside The Loop, which it doesn’t. Now, I think it’s better to keep ‘em two functions separated: one for theTITLEelement of a WP page, and another one for the post titles. These two purposes are just too different IMO.No more or less different than for the post title and the title attribute in a link…
Checking my code, I noticed at least one further addition to your code was required (which amplifies the need for changes to the function handling this all).
$title_stripped = str_replace('"', '"', $title_stripped);Nice article. I just got in the problem as well as you can see. In this example it seems that WP adapts
EMwithhtmlentities(). Anyway, strip the output of these nastyTITLEattributes!In this case, is a big word, since normally WordPress runs post titles through the
wptexturize()filter at all times. (So, there will never be double quotes left in it after this process.) Becauseadd_filter('single_post_title', 'wptexturize');is hardcoded into WordPress (seewp-includes/default-filters.php), I could understand how the development team wouldn’t directly see this as an issue. Still, I think your addition is very welcome, and should be implemented.Sorry, I skipped through most of this, not to be rude, but because I’m really tired from reboot7 and I’m about to go to bed :)
Anyhoo, have you heard from the devs yet? Is anyone doing anything?
(I’m subscribed by mail.)
I filed a bug ticket with a patch attached and all, but the devs don’t seem to notice. Perhaps you can hint Matt on this when you wake up? (I’d do that myself, but I’m quite sure you have much more influence than I do.)
Great discussion. I hit this problem a couple of months ago when I started using WordPress. Initially I solved it by writing a simple template tag and using it in my theme. But I didn’t like having to edit the theme, so I wrote a plugin to do it all automatically. The trick is to use a filter, and buffer the output so the filter can tell where it is in the document and whether it needs to strip the tags.
I suppose this is far too clunky for general use, yet it’s very instructive. The plugin and the details are on my site at Safe Title: a WordPress plugin.
Nice plugin, Bennett. However, as I wrote in my comments on your site, output buffering swallows, especially in combination with
preg_match()and friends. Pretty heavy stuff for such little details as HTML inside aTITLEattribute :) , as you put it.What I’m saying is, please, WordPress dev team, consider applying my friggin’ patch.