How to Get the Page or Post Title in WordPress (PHP)

To get the current page or post title in WordPress with PHP, use get_the_title(). It returns the title as a string and works with any post type, including pages, posts, and custom post types.

// Return the title
$title = get_the_title();

// Or echo it directly
echo get_the_title();

// Pass a post ID to get the title of a specific post
$title = get_the_title( 42 );

Below I’ll cover every common variation: getting a title by ID, the difference between the_title() and get_the_title(), escaping titles for HTML attributes, getting the site title, archive and blog-page titles, the document title in the browser tab, finding a post by its title, and the fastest way to fetch a raw title without WordPress filters.

If you landed here wanting the site name rather than a post title, that is get_bloginfo( 'name' ), covered in its own section below.

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Get the current post or page title

Inside the WordPress loop (or any template file where the global $post object is set), get_the_title() returns the current post’s title:

// Inside the loop
while ( have_posts() ) {
    the_post();
    $title = get_the_title();
    echo esc_html( $title );
}

It works in single.php, page.php, archive.php, and anywhere else inside a standard WordPress loop. Always esc_html() the output when rendering it as HTML content (WordPress escapes it for you in most core functions, but not when you echo a variable).

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Get a title by post ID

Pass an integer post ID or a WP_Post object to get_the_title() to grab the title of any post, regardless of whether it’s the current one:

// Title of post ID 42
$title = get_the_title( 42 );

// Or pass a WP_Post object
$post_obj = get_post( 42 );
$title = get_the_title( $post_obj );

This is the method you want inside a custom WP_Query loop, a widget, a shortcode callback, or anywhere the global $post isn’t reliably set. You can get the post ID with get_the_ID() when you need it.

One thing to watch for: if the post is password-protected or private, WordPress automatically prepends Protected: or Private: to the title. Use get_post_field() (below) if you want the raw title without that prefix.

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the_title() vs get_the_title()

WordPress has two similar-looking functions that do different things:

Function	Returns or echoes?	Typical use
get_the_title()	Returns a string	When you need to manipulate the title (truncate, concatenate, pass to another function)
the_title()	Echoes directly	When you want to print the title immediately, optionally wrapped in HTML

Quick side-by-side:

// the_title() with HTML wrapping (echoes immediately)
the_title( '<h1>', '</h1>' );

// get_the_title() when you need to process it first
$title = get_the_title();
$short_title = wp_trim_words( $title, 5 );
echo esc_html( $short_title );

When in doubt, reach for get_the_title(). It’s the more flexible option and you can always echo the result when you don’t need to manipulate it.

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Use a title inside an HTML attribute

When a title goes inside an HTML attribute like title="" or alt="", use the_title_attribute(). It strips HTML tags and encodes quotation marks so your markup doesn’t break if the title happens to contain characters that would:

<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"
   title="<?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
    <?php the_title(); ?>
</a>

To return the escaped value instead of echoing it, pass echo=false:

$safe_title = the_title_attribute( array( 'echo' => false ) );

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Get the WordPress site title

If you need the overall site name (not a post title), use get_bloginfo(). It returns whatever’s set in Settings → General:

// Site title
$site_title = get_bloginfo( 'name' );

// Site tagline / description
$tagline = get_bloginfo( 'description' );

// Home URL
$home_url = get_bloginfo( 'url' );

For a Multisite install, get_bloginfo( 'name' ) returns the current site’s title, while get_site_option( 'site_name' ) returns the network’s name.

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Get the archive page title

On a category, tag, author, date, or custom taxonomy archive, get_the_title() will return the title of the first post in the loop, not the archive itself. Use get_the_archive_title():

// Returns something like "Category: Tutorials"
$archive_title = get_the_archive_title();

// Just the term name, no prefix
single_cat_title( '', false );     // category
single_tag_title( '', false );     // tag
single_term_title( '', false );    // any taxonomy
post_type_archive_title( '', false ); // CPT archive

To remove the Category: / Tag: prefix from get_the_archive_title() without switching functions, hook into the get_the_archive_title filter:

add_filter( 'get_the_archive_title', function( $title ) {
    return preg_replace( '/^[A-Za-z ]+:\s*/', '', $title );
} );

One archive-like page trips people up: the blog posts page you choose under Settings, then Reading. It is a page, but WordPress runs the main posts loop on it, so get_the_title() hands you the first post’s title rather than the page’s. single_post_title() reads the queried object instead, which on that page is the page itself:

// On the blog posts page the queried object is the page itself, not the first post
if ( is_home() && ! is_front_page() ) {
    $blog_title = single_post_title( '', false );
    // Equivalent: get_the_title( get_option( 'page_for_posts' ) )
}

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Get a raw title without WordPress filters

get_the_title() runs the result through the protected_title_format, private_title_format and the_title filters, which is why password-protected posts come back with Protected: prepended and private ones with Private:. If you want the raw value straight from the database, use get_post_field():

$raw_title = get_post_field( 'post_title', 42 );

This is faster than get_the_title() when you’re fetching thousands of titles in a loop and don’t need filtering applied. Just remember to escape the output yourself (esc_html, esc_attr) since you’re bypassing the sanitization filters.

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Get the document title (what the browser tab shows)

The title in the browser tab and in search results is a third thing again, assembled from the post title, the site name, pagination and the tagline. Since WordPress 4.4 any theme that declares add_theme_support( 'title-tag' ) (every block theme does) prints it through wp_get_document_title(), and you can read or reshape it with the same filters an SEO plugin uses:

// What WordPress will print inside <title> for the current request
$document_title = wp_get_document_title();

// Change the separator (the default is a hyphen)
add_filter( 'document_title_separator', function () {
    return '|';
} );

// Edit the parts before they are joined: 'title', 'page', 'tagline', 'site'
add_filter( 'document_title_parts', function ( $parts ) {
    $parts['site'] = 'SmartWP';
    return $parts;
} );

The parts array carries four keys: title, page, tagline and site, and pre_get_document_title lets you replace the whole string before any of that runs. If Yoast or Rank Math is active, it is already filtering here, so change the plugin’s settings rather than fighting it in code.

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Find a post by its title

Sometimes the title is what you have and the post is what you want. The function everyone remembers, get_page_by_title(), was deprecated in WordPress 6.2 and its own docblock says to use WP_Query. The replacement is the title argument, added in 4.4, which does an exact match on post_title:

$query = new WP_Query( array(
    'post_type'      => 'page',
    'title'          => 'About Us',   // exact match on post_title
    'post_status'    => 'publish',
    'posts_per_page' => 1,
    'no_found_rows'  => true,
) );
$page = $query->have_posts() ? $query->posts[0] : null;

Exact means exact: case and punctuation have to match the stored title, and you will get whichever matching post the ordering returns first, so pass post_type and post_status to narrow it. If you find yourself doing this often, store the post ID somewhere instead; titles change, IDs do not.

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Block themes: the Post Title and Site Title blocks

If your theme is a block theme, you are rarely writing any of this. The Post Title block outputs get_the_title() for whatever post the template is showing, the Site Title block outputs get_bloginfo( 'name' ), and the Archive Title block outputs get_the_archive_title(). The PHP above still matters inside plugins, shortcodes and custom blocks, but for templates the blocks are the same functions with a settings panel in front of them.

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Frequently asked questions

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Bottom line

Most of the time you’ll want get_the_title(), with or without a post ID. Switch to the_title_attribute() when you’re dropping the title into an HTML attribute, get_bloginfo( 'name' ) when you need the site name, get_the_archive_title() on archive pages, single_post_title() on the blog posts page, and wp_get_document_title() for the browser tab. To go the other way and find a post from its title, use WP_Query with the title argument. For raw, unfiltered database values, get_post_field() is the escape hatch.

Related: how to get a post ID, get the current page slug, or browse the full WordPress code snippets library.