Skip to content

Posts list: show part of excerpt in Compact view if post has no title #11553

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
sabernhardt wants to merge 2 commits into
base: trunk
Choose a base branch
from
+29 −2
Open

Posts list: show part of excerpt in Compact view if post has no title #11553

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
08f13aa
Add up to 15 words of excerpt if post has no title
sabernhardt Apr 10, 2026
855d1d2
optional styles for trimmed excerpt within link
sabernhardt Apr 10, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
5 changes: 5 additions & 0 deletions src/wp-admin/css/list-tables.css
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -363,6 +363,11 @@ td.plugin-title p {
margin: 6px 0;
}

.trimmed-post-excerpt {
font-weight: 400;
padding-left: 4px;
}
Comment on lines +366 to +369
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Author

@sabernhardt sabernhardt Apr 11, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I'm not sure I want the lighter font-weight when it is still part of the link, but I like having a small amount of padding to offset the excerpt.

Posts list with published and draft posts, in Compact view, with excerpts for titleless posts

And the title is not linked in Trash:

post without a title, showing trimmed excerpt in Trash


/* Media file column */
table.media .column-title .media-icon {
float: left;
Expand Down
26 changes: 24 additions & 2 deletions src/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-posts-list-table.php
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1018,9 +1018,13 @@ private function _page_rows( &$children_pages, &$count, $parent_page, $level, $p
* @since 4.3.0
* @since 5.9.0 Renamed `$post` to `$item` to match parent class for PHP 8 named parameter support.
*
* @global string $mode List table view mode.
*
* @param WP_Post $item The current WP_Post object.
*/
public function column_cb( $item ) {
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Author

@sabernhardt sabernhardt Apr 11, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

The checkbox label should include the same text as the link (with 'Select').

The locked icon text might not require the same, but I updated that anyway.

global $mode;

// Restores the more descriptive, specific name for use within this method.
$post = $item;

Expand All @@ -1037,13 +1041,23 @@ public function column_cb( $item ) {
* @param WP_Post $post The current WP_Post object.
*/
if ( apply_filters( 'wp_list_table_show_post_checkbox', $show, $post ) ) :

$post_title = _draft_or_post_title();

// If the post has no title, try adding part of the excerpt.
if ( 'excerpt' !== $mode && '' === get_the_title( $post ) && ! post_password_required( $post ) ) {
$excerpt = get_the_excerpt( $post );
if ( '' !== $excerpt && is_string( $excerpt ) ) {
$post_title .= ' ' . esc_html( wp_trim_words( $excerpt, 15, ' …' ) );
}
}
?>
<input id="cb-select-<?php the_ID(); ?>" type="checkbox" name="post[]" value="<?php the_ID(); ?>" />
<label for="cb-select-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<span class="screen-reader-text">
<?php
/* translators: %s: Post title. */
printf( __( 'Select %s' ), _draft_or_post_title() );
printf( __( 'Select %s' ), $post_title );
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

@mcsf mcsf Apr 14, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I wonder if this might make it more confusing for users with screen readers or not. Visual users have the luxury of styling to differentiate "(no title)" (bold) from the trimmed excerpt (regular weight).

Should we rearrange the output for screen readers? Otherwise it'll look like this:

<span class="screen-reader-text">Select (no title) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</span>

?>
</span>
</label>
Expand All @@ -1054,7 +1068,7 @@ public function column_cb( $item ) {
printf(
/* translators: Hidden accessibility text. %s: Post title. */
__( '&#8220;%s&#8221; is locked' ),
_draft_or_post_title()
$post_title
);
?>
</span>
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -1142,6 +1156,14 @@ public function column_title( $post ) {

$title = _draft_or_post_title();

// If the post has no title, try adding part of the excerpt.
if ( 'excerpt' !== $mode && '' === get_the_title( $post ) && ! post_password_required( $post ) ) {
$excerpt = get_the_excerpt( $post );
if ( '' !== $excerpt && is_string( $excerpt ) ) {
$title .= ' <span class="trimmed-post-excerpt">' . esc_html( wp_trim_words( $excerpt, 15, ' &hellip;' ) ) . '</span>';
Copy link
Copy Markdown
Author

@sabernhardt sabernhardt Apr 11, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Escapes the output even though wp_trim_words() strips all tags, because it also has a wp_trim_words filter.

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Contributor

@mcsf mcsf Apr 14, 2026

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

About the $more string:

  • Why the leading space? In my mind a simple '&hellip;' makes the most sense, and this seems to be corroborated by the many priors in the codebase.
  • Do you think we should make it translateable? In my mind yes, but then I do see a lot of occurrences in Core — especially these older Admin pieces — of this ellipsis being hardcoded:
wp-includes/general-template.php :4783: $page_links[] = '<span class="page-numbers dots">' . __( '&hellip;' ) . '</span>';
wp-admin/edit-comments.php       :169:  $draft_or_post_title = wp_html_excerpt( _draft_or_post_title( $post_id ), 50, '&hellip;' );
wp-admin/themes.php              :252:  <?php echo ! empty( $_GET['search'] ) ? __( '&hellip;' ) : count( $themes ); ?></span>
wp-admin/nav-menus.php           :650:  wp_html_excerpt( $_nav_menu->name, 40, '&hellip;' );

… whereas I expected something like:

// translators: If your locale needs a different [bla bla…]
$more = _x( '&hellip;', 'ellipsis or equivalent typographic marker of a trimmed excerpt' );

// ...

wp_trim_words( $excerpt, 15, $more ) )

}
}

if ( $can_edit_post && 'trash' !== $post->post_status ) {
printf(
'<a class="row-title" href="%s">%s%s</a>',
Expand Down
Loading