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I am trying to add meta titles via the Yoast SEO plugin.

My theme is not compatible with this -- the resulting <title> tag is a concatenation of the Yoast title and the theme's title.

One solution is to ensure the <title> tag in header.php is set to <?php wp_title(''); ?> (see Yoast article here -- section "Themes without title-tag Support").

This method works (I tested it), and is also the solution suggested to me by my theme devs. But how can I do this via a custom function in my child theme's functions.php, rather than editing header.php?

I realize one possible solution is to copy header.php from parent theme to child theme, then edit that file. But I’m trying to avoid that if possible.

I tried the answer given in this previous question, but all that did was add a second <title> tag to the page, in addition to the existing, incorrect <title>.

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If an incorrect <title> tag has been added to the header template the only option that will work is the child theme method. You can't override template markup with a custom function.

If you do use a child theme then don't use wp_title(), just remove the title tag entirely and register support for support title-tag.

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  • Thanks for that. When you say, "You can't override template markup with a custom function," you are speaking in reference to the the <title> tag only--correct? Also, when you say, "If you do use a child theme then don't use wp_title(), just remove the title tag entirely and register support for support title-tag," that still requires me to edit header.php in my child theme--correct?
    – cag8f
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 13:22
  • "you are speaking in reference to the the <title> tag only--correct?" No. It's a general rule. You can change the outputs of functions that have a filter, or replace the template in a child theme, but you can't use a function to change arbitrary bits of markup within a template. "that still requires me to edit header.php in my child theme--correct?" Yes, to remove the title tag.
    – Jacob Peattie
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 14:11
  • "You can change the outputs of functions that have a filter" Got it. It was this that I just wanted to confirm was still possible. "you can't use a function to change arbitrary bits of markup within a template." Got it--that's what I'm trying to do here. I was hoping <title> was a special case, that perhaps had some special WordPress API function to arbitrarily modify it. Wishful thinking I guess. OK thanks for the explanation.
    – cag8f
    Commented May 11, 2018 at 4:51

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