WordPress 7.0 is finally cleaning up one of those legacy UX artifacts that has bothered accessibility advocates for years: the redundant “Visit Author’s website” tooltip. If you’ve been building themes for a while, you know that author link title attributes often provided zero extra value while adding clutter for screen readers and mouse users alike.
In this update, the Core team has refactored several key functions to either remove these attributes by default or give us the precision to toggle them via parameters. It’s a small change, but if you’re maintaining high-traffic sites, it’s one less bit of bloat to worry about. You might want to check out my previous notes on WordPress 7.0 RC4 technical prep to see how this fits into the larger release cycle.
Refactoring the Author’s Website Link
The standard functions get_the_author_link() and the_author_link() now accept a new $use_title_attr parameter. Historically, these functions would always output a title attribute like title="Visit Author's website". While they still default to true for backward compatibility, you can now explicitly kill the tooltip 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 takes a bolder step. The title attribute is now removed by default in the_author_posts_link(). This is a win for clean HTML, but it changes how we handle author link title attributes if we actually wanted that text for something else.
The the_author_posts_link filter has been updated to include three arguments instead of one. This allows you to refactor the link text without having to perform messy regex on the entire 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 also got the axe. It simply removes the “Posts by Author” tooltips entirely when html is set to true. There’s no extra parameter here; it’s just gone. This aligns with modern MDN guidance on the title attribute, which suggests that most title attributes are inaccessible to mobile users and keyboard navigators.
Look, if this author link title attributes stuff is eating up your dev hours, let me handle it. I’ve been wrestling with WordPress since the 4.x days.
Pragmatic Takeaway
This isn’t a breaking change for most, but it’s a “gotcha” if your CSS or JS relied on selecting those title attributes (which, let’s be honest, you shouldn’t have been doing anyway). If you need to restore the previous behavior for a specific client requirement, use the new filter arguments rather than trying to hack core. For more technical depth, check the official Trac Ticket #62835. Ship it clean.
