Displaying Page Title on index.php

Question

I have my posts page set as index.php, and on there I have my main heading (as I do on all pages).

I'm having trouble displaying the page's heading however. The page is called 'Blog' in WordPress, and has been specified as the posts page.

If I output the page heading with wp_title('');, I get the title of the page — 'Blog' — but with the site name after it (perhaps due to Yoast SEO plugin).

If I use the_title() then it gives me the title of the most recent blog post, even though I'm calling the function outside of the loop.

So I've had to resort to simple hardcoding <h1>Blog</h1> which is far from ideal.

Is there a way I can pull in the name of the page title dynamically but just the page title on it's own?

Answer 1

Strange. Outside the loop, the_title() should give you the current page name, if you really are on a page, and not viewing a specific post. If it gives post title instead, it may mean that you are somehow inside a loop. But if that were true, wp_title shouldn't show "Blog".

See if other options give the same result:

//the_title();
single_post_title();
echo $post->post_name; // I think this shows the url page name

Also check for is_page(). You might try the is_page('Blog') test.

if (is_page('blog')) {
echo 'Blog';
}
else {
the_title();
}

just to see what happens.

Answer 2

It's correct that the_title() on blog page will return the most recent post's title and hence it can't be used.

When a page is set as a "posts page" from reading settings, WP calls home.php template file (or index.php if home.php doesn't exist) instead of page.php (see: Template Hierarchy).

So, is_page() conditional won't work on blog page because it's not a page anymore.

The only way to output the actual page title is to use single_post_title();

single_post_title() is a part of the general-template.php file which clearly states that

If we're on the blog page and that page is not the homepage or a single page that is designated as the homepage, use the container page's title.

You can review the code and comments here https://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/4.4/src/wp-includes/general-template.php#L871

Answer 3

$our_title = get_the_title( get_option('page_for_posts', true) );

Answer 4

I know it's been a while since the OP, but I'm hoping this helps others that came here looking for the same thing.

single_post_title() works for pages until you get to blog and category pages (and presumably product & tag pages in woocommerce)

So first simply check if it's a page, otherwise use the wp_title function

if (is_page()) {
    single_post_title();
} else {
    echo rtrim(wp_title('', false), '- ');
}

I did need to remove the site title from my settings, but I was manually adding it on either side of this function anyway.