have WP Gallery display the title instead of caption

Question

OK, I have looked and read quite a few message boards about this problem and I can not seem to find an answer.

I am uploading thousands of photos for a photographer and using the WP Gallery shortcode. I do not want to manually input captions for every thumbnail, I want the image title to automatically populate that area.

How do I modify the Gallery output to make this change?

edit here is a link to a gallery I have up. The image titles are currently manually input into the caption field. http://maryannerussell.com/afsp/

Answer 1

The quick & dirty way, to set the title as caption, would be to use SQL (untested):

UPDATE wp_posts 
SET post_excerpt = post_title 
WHERE  
        post_excerpt    = '' 
    AND post_type       = 'attachment' 
    AND post_status     = 'inherit'
    AND post_mime_type  = 'image/jpeg'
    AND ID              = 123

Here we target the jpeg image with ID 123 and empty caption.

Note I added the ID = 123 and post_mime_type = 'image/jpeg' as extra restrictions that you can adjust while testing. Also remember to adjust the table name of wp_posts.

WARNING: Backup your database before testing!

If you're looking for a dynamic way, then my answer here might be related.

It might also be possible for you to add the caption while uploading your images:

/**
 * Automatically set the title as caption, when uploading an attachment.
 *
 * @see https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/188708/26350
 */
add_filter( 'wp_insert_attachment_data', function( $data, $postarr )
{    
    // Let's target only the uploading process and not the updating of attachments:
    if( empty( $data['post_excerpt'] ) && isset( $postarr['ID'] ) && 0 == $postarr['ID'] )
        $data['post_excerpt'] = $data['post_title'];

    return $data;
}, 10, 2 );    

Answer 2

There is a filter called post_gallery which allows you to create your own html for your gallery. You could copy and edit the code from the gallery_shortcode function, (which creates the gallery code? and use that in the filter, with titles included/