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How to Customize Post Meta Display in the Twenty Fifteen Theme

28 threads Sep 9, 2025 Theme → Twenty fifteen

Content

Many users of the popular Twenty Fifteen WordPress theme want to change how and where post information like the date, author, and title is displayed. This is a common request, as the default layout doesn't always fit every website's design or organizational needs. Based on community discussions, this guide covers the most frequent customization requests and their solutions.

Common Post Meta Customization Requests

Users often want to:

  • Move the post date from the bottom of a post to the top, beneath the title.
  • Hide post titles on the blog homepage or archive pages.
  • Display only post titles (without content or images) on category or archive pages.
  • Show the time alongside the date on posts.
  • Remove the calendar icon next to the date.
  • Completely remove the author name and date from posts.

Why These Customizations Require Code

The Twenty Fifteen theme, like many WordPress themes, displays post meta information (date, author, etc.) in specific template files. The theme's design and functionality are hard-coded into these files. To change the location, visibility, or format of this information, you must modify these templates. It is highly recommended to make these changes in a child theme to prevent your modifications from being erased when the theme updates.

How to Make These Changes

1. Moving the Date or Author to the Top of a Post

This requires editing the theme's template files in a child theme. The primary file to modify is usually content.php. You would need to find the code that outputs the date (located within the entry-footer div) and move it to the entry-header div. This is an advanced modification that involves carefully copying and pasting PHP code within the template.

2. Hiding or Showing Only Post Titles

To display only titles on archive pages (like your blog page or category lists), you can use a custom CSS rule. This method is simpler than editing template files.

.home .entry-content,
.archive .entry-content,
.home .post-thumbnail,
.archive .post-thumbnail {
    display: none;
}

You can add this CSS through the Customizer under Additional CSS, or by using a plugin like "Simple Custom CSS".

3. Showing the Time Alongside the Date

The theme uses the standard WordPress the_time() function. To change the date format to include time, you can modify the date/time settings globally in WordPress.

  1. Go to Settings > General in your WordPress dashboard.
  2. Change the format in the "Date Format" and "Time Format" fields to your preference (e.g., F j, Y g:i a).

Alternatively, for a "time ago" format (e.g., "3 days ago"), a plugin like Days Ago Post Date Format can be used.

4. Removing the Calendar Icon

The calendar icon is added via CSS. To remove it, add the following custom CSS:

.posted-on:before {
    display: none;
}

5. Removing Author and Date Completely

To remove the entire post meta section (author, date, categories), you can use CSS to hide it. The following rule will hide the entire footer meta area.

.entry-footer {
    display: none;
}

Conclusion

Customizing the display of post meta data in the Twenty Fifteen theme is a powerful way to tailor your site's appearance. For simple visual changes like hiding elements, CSS is the quickest and safest method. For more structural changes like moving elements, creating a child theme and editing template files is necessary. Always remember to clear your cache after making changes to see the results.

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