Extension:Display Title

**MediaWiki extensions manual**
Display Title; Release status: stable
Implementation	User interface, Parser function
Description	Uses displaytitle page property in link text and talk page title; optionally displays original page title as subtitle; and provides parser function to query displaytitle
Author(s)	Cindy Cicalese talk; Tobias Oetterer talk;
Latest version	4.1.0 (2025-08-19)
Compatibility policy	Snapshots releases along with MediaWiki. Master is not backward compatible.
MediaWiki	1.39+
PHP	7.4+
Composer	mediawiki/display-title
	Parameters $wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects; $wgDisplayTitleExcludes; $wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle;
	Hooks used BeforePageDisplay; HtmlPageLinkRendererBegin; OutputPageParserOutput; ParserFirstCallInit; ScribuntoExternalLibraries; SelfLinkBegin; SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal;
Licence	No licence specified
Download	Download extension ; Git [?]: Browse repository (GitHub); Gerrit code review; Git commit log; Download source tarball;
	Translate the Display Title extension
Issues	Open tasks · Report a bug

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The Display Title extension allows a page's Display title to be used as the default link text in links to the page - both links from other pages as well as self-links on the page. Display Title also uses the display title of a page as part of the title of its talk page. It optionally displays the original page title as a subtitle on the page. And, it provides a parser function to query a page's display title.

This extension builds on functionality in MediaWiki core that supports setting a page's display title using the DISPLAYTITLE magic word. Placing {{DISPLAYTITLE:My Display Title}} on a page stores the value of the display title (My Display Title in this case) in the displaytitle page property of the MediaWiki page_props table and, if configured appropriately, displays that value on the page as the title in the title bar. The extension queries the displaytitle value in the page_props table to provide its features.

Installation

Download and move the extracted DisplayTitle folder to your extensions/ directory.
Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:
```
cd extensions/
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/DisplayTitle
```
Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
```
wfLoadExtension( 'DisplayTitle' );
```
Configure as required.
Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

Configuration flag	Default value	Description
`$wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle`	`false`	If false, display the page's original title as a subtitle below the title bar.
`$wgDisplayTitleExcludes`	`[ ]`	An array of names of pages that should not have their page names replaced with their display title in links to the page.
`$wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects`	`true`	Defines whether redirects should be followed for displaying of the title.

While not strictly necessary for the functioning of Display Title, in order to allow the {{DISPLAYTITLE:...}} magic word to function as expected, set the following MediaWiki core configuration variables:

$wgAllowDisplayTitle = true; // defaults to true
$wgRestrictDisplayTitle = false; // defaults to true

Display title on edit pages and edit links

In order for the Display Title to be used on edit pages and links to them, edit the following system messages on your wiki (substituting the wiki's local language where appropriate):

System Message Page Name	Old Page Content	New Page Content
MediaWiki:Editing	Editing $1	Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} \| {{NAMESPACE}}: \|}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}}
MediaWiki:Editingcomment	Editing $1 (new section)	Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} \| {{NAMESPACE}}: \|}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}} (new section)
MediaWiki:Editingsection	Editing $1 (section)	Editing {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} \| {{NAMESPACE}}: \|}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}} (section)
MediaWiki:Editsectionhint	Edit section: $1	Edit section: {{#if: {{NAMESPACE}} \| {{NAMESPACE}}: \|}}{{#getdisplaytitle:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}}}}
MediaWiki:Creating	Creating $1	Creating {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}\|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}

And if you also use Page Forms .

System Message Page Name	Old Page Content	New Page Content
MediaWiki:Pf formedit createtitle	Create $1: $2	Create $1: {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}\|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}
MediaWiki:Pf formedit edittitle	Edit $1: $2	Edit $1: {{#if:{{NAMESPACE}}\|{{NAMESPACE}}:}} {{#getdisplaytitle: {{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} }}

Usage

Linking

The behavior of the Display Title extension for different types of links is summarized below. The table shows what the link text will be for different situations. In the table, A represents a page title and a represents the page title with the first character of the page name (i.e. the part after the Namespace: if there is a namespace) in lower case. Note that if a page is a redirect (i.e. Page A in the "Page A Redirects to Page B" columns below) and has a display title set, that display title will be ignored by this extension.

Source page contains link:	Page A Does Not Redirect		Page A Redirects to Page B
Source page contains link:	Page A Does Not Have Display Title	Page A Has Display Title Z	Page B Does Not Have Display Title	Page B Has Display Title Y
[[A]]	A	Z	B	Y
[[a]]	a
[[A \| A]]	A	Z	B	Y
[[a \| A]]	A	Z	B	Y
[[A \| a]]	a
[[a \| a]]	a
[[A \| X]]	X
[[a \| X]]	X

`#getdisplaytitle` parser function

The #getdisplaytitle parser function gets the display title of the page provided. For example:

{{#getdisplaytitle:Book:42}}

will show the displaytitle of page Book:42. To get the display title of the current page, use:

{{#getdisplaytitle:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}

Lua/Scribunto support

Two Lua (see Extension:Scribunto ) functions exist for getting and setting a page's display title: mw.ext.displaytitle.get() and mw.ext.displaytitle.set(). To use them, you could create a page Module:DisplayTitle containing the following:

local p = {}

function p.set(frame)
	return mw.ext.displaytitle.set(frame.args[1])
end

function p.get(frame)
	return mw.ext.displaytitle.get(frame.args[1])
end

return p

You could then use {{#invoke:DisplayTitle|set|My Display Title}} on a page to set the page's display title to My Display Title, and you could use {{#invoke:DisplayTitle|get|My Page}} to get the display title of page My Page.

Redirects

For redirect pages, if the target page has a display title, it will be used as the display title of the redirect page.

Note that this has two implications that may be unexpected the first time a user sees them. When a page with a display title is moved leaving a redirect, on the page indicating that the move was a success the link text will be the same for both the source and target pages. And, on the Special:WhatLinksHere page for a page with a display title that is the target of a redirect, the link text of the redirect page will be the display title of the target page.

A single level of redirect will be followed.

History

The functionality in this extension evolved as part of the Semantic Title extension. Special thanks go to Van de Bugger, the author of version 1.0 of Semantic Title.

Release notes

Version	Description
4.1.0	Bug fixes
4.0.3	Bug fixes
4.0.2	Fix Lua class name (T343929)
4.0.1	Fix title handling in hooks (T342672) Revert user preference to disable the extension due to a bug (T342727) and since the current approach introduces latency and risk
4.0.0	Drop support for MediaWiki 1.38 and earlier Add `mw-displaytitle-subtitle` class to subtitle (T205250) Fix subpage subtitles for subpages more than two levels deep (T188872) Fix redirect subtitle so it does not use the displaytitle (T306459) Add name and description properties to composer.json (T311321) Add a user preference to disable the extension (T217179) Coding style and test improvements
3.3	Do not remove fragments if not proper part of text Change `PersonalUrls` hook to `SkinTemplateNavigation::Universal` hook Replace deprecated `WikiPage::factory/Use WikiPageFactory`
3.2	Add config option for changing redirect display (`$wgDisplayTitleFollowRedirects`) Replace deprecated `PageProps::getInstance`
3.1	Fix incompatibility with the Cite extension
3.0	Several fixes to anchor/fragment behavior Updates due to code deprecations in MediaWiki Compatibility dropped with MW 1.34 and lower
2.2.0	Add `$wgDisplayTitleExcludes` array to define a list of pages on which links should not use DisplayTitle Fix behavior when there are underscores in the link text Don't use deprecated ParserBeforeStrip hook
2.1.0	Added tests Added null title check
2.0.0	Compatibility dropped with MW 1.28 and lower Bug fixes: T181669: Handle integers passed as link text Fixed bug introduced in version 1.5.2 that caused self links to be wrapped in HtmlArmor
1.5.3	On redirect pages, show display title of target page Follows a single level of redirect
1.5.2	Bug fixes: T180413: Use supplied link text rather than display title when link text matches page title except for case of first character T180409: Undefined variable: found in "DisplayTitleHooks.php" on line 152 T181228: Display titles with italics show as HTML
1.5.1	Fixed issue for logged-in users on using action "info"
1.5	Text that should have overridden link text was being ignored Fix link to user page in header (personal URLs)
1.4	Updated to work with MediaWiki 1.28+
1.3	Modified self-links to determine display text identically to non-self-links
1.2	Added mw.ext.displaytitle.get() and mw.ext.displaytitle.get() Lua functions written by User:Oetterer
1.1	Added check for title with only fragment when creating link
1.0	Initial release

Known incompatibilities

Configuration parameter $wgDisplayTitleHideSubtitle will not work if you also have the Semantic Breadcrumb Links extension lower than version 1.5.0 installed. Thus the original page title will not display below the title bar.