WordPress 7.0 finally cleans up a bit of legacy UX that has annoyed accessibility folks for years: the redundant “Visit Author’s website” tooltip. If you have built themes for a while, you know that author link title attributes usually add nothing while cluttering the output for screen readers and mouse users.
In this release, the core team refactored several functions to either drop these attributes by default or let you toggle them with a parameter. It is a small change, but on high-traffic sites it is one less bit of markup to worry about. If you want the wider context, see my earlier notes on WordPress 7.0 RC4 technical prep.
Refactoring the author’s website link
The standard functions get_the_author_link() and the_author_link() now take a new $use_title_attr parameter. These functions always used to output a title attribute like title="Visit Author's website". They still default to true for backward compatibility, but you can now switch the tooltip off at the call site.
<?php
// The old way (still includes title by default)
the_author_link();
// The WordPress 7.0 way (clean, no title attribute)
the_author_link( false ); Archive links and the new filter signature
For the author archive link, the one that says “Posts by [Name]”, WordPress 7.0 goes further. The title attribute is now removed by default in the_author_posts_link(). That is good for clean HTML, but it changes how you handle author link title attributes if you actually wanted that text for something else.
The the_author_posts_link filter now passes three arguments instead of one. That lets you rewrite the link text without running messy regex over the whole HTML string.
<?php
/**
* Customizing author link text using the new 7.0 filter signature.
*
* @param string $link The full HTML link.
* @param string $author The author's display name.
* @param string $title The text that WAS used for the title attribute.
*/
function bbioon_customize_author_archive_text( $link, $author = '', $title = '' ) {
// If we want the link to actually say "Posts by Author" instead of just "Author"
if ( ! empty( $title ) && ! empty( $author ) ) {
$link = str_replace(
'>' . $author . '</a>',
'>' . esc_html( $title ) . '</a>',
$link
);
}
return $link;
}
add_filter( 'the_author_posts_link', 'bbioon_customize_author_archive_text', 10, 3 );Legacy lists: wp_list_authors
The wp_list_authors() function got the same treatment. It drops the “Posts by Author” tooltips entirely when html is set to true. There is no extra parameter; it is just gone. That follows current MDN guidance on the title attribute, which notes that most title attributes are inaccessible to mobile users and keyboard navigators.
If this author link title attributes work is eating up your dev hours, I can take it off your plate. I have been working with WordPress since the 4.x days.
Pragmatic takeaway
This is not a breaking change for most sites, but it is a gotcha if your CSS or JS relied on selecting those title attributes, which you should not have been doing anyway. If a client needs the old behavior, use the new filter arguments rather than hacking core. For the full detail, see the official Trac ticket #62835.
