Single Product Title Post Author

Hello Again,

Don’t know what happened to the first screenshot, but here it is again.

A preview of a ticket before posting would be helpful.

Thank you,
Barry

Hello Michael,

Thank you for your suggestion and in the absence of a better alternative, this is what I’ve done:

/**
* Filter to change the page title.
 * 
 * @param string $title
 */
add_filter( 'rank_math/frontend/title', function( $title ) {

	global $post;
	
	$title_len = strlen($title);
	$bloginfo = get_bloginfo();
	$bloginfo_len = strlen($bloginfo);
	
	$author_name = get_the_author_meta( 'display_name', $post->post_author);
	$title = substr($title, 0, $title_len - ($bloginfo_len + 3)) . ' by ' . $author_name . substr($title, -1 * $bloginfo_len - 3);
	return $title;
});

This does achieve the correct end result, that the title in the structured data is as we want for our book products, however there are shortcomings in this solution, as follows:

1. This does not show the title correctly in the backend preview of the snippet.
2. The SEO score for the title in the backend is consequently too low.
3. I conjecture, in consequence, this will discourage us from displaying our SEO score.
4. We aim to have our book authors configure their own products and this solution will confuse them unnecessarily.
5. As a novice PHP and WordPress internals functionary this was frustrating, because I would like to have split the $title at the separator character. Apparently, this can be fetched using WPSEO_Utils::get_title_separator(), but on trying that my functions.php couldn’t find the class, so rather than waste more time I used the kludge shown.

All these shortcomings mentioned would be overcome by having an %author% tag as suggested. Once more, I observe that, %userid% correctly returns the author id. Further, the author display name is readily available as I’ve shown. Therefore I suggest an %author% tag is a highly desirable enhancement.

Best regards,
Barry

Hello Michael,

I thought we were on a winner here and was anxious to give congratulations, but regrettably, at this point, no.

While the replacement of %name% has effect in SEO Titles and Meta/Products as shown in this screenshot, it does not carry through to the products, as shown here, where it is actually needed.

This test is on localhost, so no caching beyond the browser is involved. I have cleared the browser cache. I tried testing the tag directly on the product, but %name% there is still returning the post title. I have also tried a new product, but as expected, %name% is still returning the title.

Do we need a different filter, another array or what?

Thank you for your suggestions so far,
Barry

Hi Michael,

Again I will stress the points 1, 2 and particularly 4 that I made in my list of shortcomings above. So, at this stage, the initial frontend solution implemented is the better and less confusing option. We’ll just have to tell our authors (presently few, but we aim for thousands over time) don’t worry, your name will appear in the structured data title. So, for me regrettably, it is pointless to follow your suggestion to check the results of this replacements change as we clearly will not be using that.

Again, can I urge Rank Math to include a tag for the author’s display name usable for WooCommerce products. Also, again, observing that the %userid% tag does return the author id, so surely the plugin is halfway there?

With the frontend solution, I’d overlooked to restrict it’s scope, so the currently implemented code is:

/**
* Filter to change the page title.
 * 
 * @param string $title
 */
add_filter( 'rank_math/frontend/title', function( $title ) {

	global $post;
	
	// Detect if it is a single post with a post author of custom type 'product'
	if ( is_single() && isset( $post->post_author ) && (get_post_type() == 'product')) {
		$title_len = strlen($title);
		$bloginfo = get_bloginfo();
		$bloginfo_len = strlen($bloginfo);
	
		$author_name = get_the_author_meta( 'display_name', $post->post_author);
		$title = substr($title, 0, $title_len - ($bloginfo_len + 3)) . ' by ' . $author_name . substr($title, -1 * $bloginfo_len - 3);
	}
	
	return $title;
}); 

Best regards,
Barry