Change "Enter Title Here" help text on a custom post type

Question

I have a custom post type created for a directory that will end up being sorted alphabetically. I will be sorting the posts in alphabetical order by title, so I want to make sure that the Title is entered as last name/first name. Is there a way to change that default help text -- "Enter Title Here" -- in my custom post to something else?

Answer 1

There is no way to customize that string explicitly. But it is passed through translation function and so is easy to filter.

Try something like this (don't forget to change to your post type):

add_filter('gettext','custom_enter_title');

function custom_enter_title( $input ) {

    global $post_type;

    if( is_admin() && 'Enter title here' == $input && 'your_post_type' == $post_type )
        return 'Enter Last Name, Followed by First Name';

    return $input;
}

Answer 2

I know I'm a little late to the party here, but I'd like to add that the enter_title_here filter was added specifically for this purpose in WordPress v3.1.

add_filter( 'enter_title_here', 'custom_enter_title' );
function custom_enter_title( $input ) {
    if ( 'your_post_type' === get_post_type() ) {
        return __( 'Enter your name here', 'your_textdomain' );
    }

    return $input;
}

Change your_post_type and your_textdomain to match your own post type name and text domain.

Answer 3

Sorry to dig this question up from grave, but there's a better solution provided since WordPress 3.1. The enter_title_here filter.

function change_default_title( $title ){
    $screen = get_current_screen();

    // For CPT 1
    if  ( 'custom_post_type_1' == $screen->post_type ) {
        $title = 'CPT1 New Title';

    // For CPT 2
    } elseif ( 'custom_post_type_2' == $screen->post_type ) {
        $title = 'CPT2 New Title';

    // For Yet Another CPT
    } elseif ( 'custom_post_type_3' == $screen->post_type ) {
        $title = 'CPT3 New Title';
    }
    // And, so on

    return $title;
}

add_filter( 'enter_title_here', 'change_default_title' );

Answer 4

Take a look in wp-admin/edit-form-advanced.php at line 246 ^{(line 329, as of WP3.5)}

<label class="screen-reader-text" id="title-prompt-text" for="title">
<?php echo apply_filters( 'enter_title_here', __( 'Enter title here' ), $post ); ?>
</label>

Answer 5

The best way to get the title format you want is to remove the title completely and add two custom fields for the name parts with proper labels. When the post is saved, create the title per PHP.