How to change your WordPress site title and tagline

The site title and tagline in WordPress are set in one place and affect more than you might expect. The site title appears in browser tabs, search engine results, RSS feeds, and often in the header of your theme. The tagline appears alongside it in many themes and in SEO metadata. Both are set during WordPress installation with defaults that most people forget to change.

Here is how to update them and where those changes show up across your site.

How to change the site title and tagline#

Through Settings (all themes)

Go to Settings > General in your WordPress admin. The first two fields are:

• Site Title – the name of your site. This is not your domain name – it is the human-readable name that represents your site in browser tabs, search results, and anywhere WordPress needs to display your site’s name.
• Tagline – a short description of your site. WordPress installs with “Just another WordPress site” as the default. If you have not changed this, search engines may be indexing that phrase alongside your site name.

Change both fields and click Save Changes. The update takes effect immediately across the entire site.

Through the Full Site Editor (block themes)

If you are using a block theme (like Twenty Twenty-Four or Twenty Twenty-Five), you can also change the site title through the Full Site Editor:

1. Go to Appearance > Editor.
2. Click the site title block in the header template.
3. Edit the text directly.
4. Save the template.

This changes how the title is displayed in the header, but the underlying site title in Settings > General is what WordPress uses everywhere else – browser tabs, RSS feeds, and SEO plugins. For consistency, update both places or just use Settings > General, which applies everywhere.

Through wp-config.php (emergency override)

If you cannot access the admin dashboard, you can force the site title by adding a filter in your theme’s functions.php or a must-use plugin:

add_filter('option_blogname', function() {
    return 'Your New Site Title';
});

add_filter('option_blogdescription', function() {
    return 'Your new tagline';
});

This is a temporary fix. Once you regain admin access, update the title through Settings > General and remove the filter code. If you are locked out of your WordPress admin entirely, that guide covers several ways to get back in.

Where the site title and tagline appear#

The site title and tagline affect more places than Settings > General:

Browser tab. The site title appears in the HTML <title> tag on your homepage, usually formatted as “Site Title – Tagline” or just “Site Title” depending on your theme and SEO plugin. On individual posts and pages, it typically shows as “Post Title – Site Title.”

Search engine results. Google and other search engines use the <title> tag as the clickable headline in search results. Your site title is part of that headline on every page. If your site title is generic or still says the default, every page in your search results carries that generic name.

RSS feed. RSS readers display your site title as the feed name. Subscribers see it every time they check your feed.

Theme header. Most themes display the site title in the header area, either as text or overlaid on a logo. Some themes only show the logo and hide the text title – but the HTML still contains the site title for screen readers and SEO.

WordPress admin. The site title appears in the admin toolbar and on the login page.

How SEO plugins override the site title in search results#

If you use Yoast SEO or Rank Math, the site title in search results is controlled by the SEO plugin’s title template, not directly by Settings > General.

In Yoast SEO, go to Yoast SEO > Search Appearance > General and look at the Homepage title template. By default, it uses variables like %%sitename%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%tagline%% . The %%sitename%% variable pulls from Settings > General, so changing the site title there still updates search results – but the format and separator are controlled by Yoast.

In Rank Math, go to Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Homepage and edit the SEO title template. The %sitename% variable works the same way.

If you change your site title in Settings > General but the old title still appears in search results, check your SEO plugin’s title templates first. The plugin may be using a hardcoded title instead of the variable.

Google also caches titles and may take days or weeks to reflect changes in search results. You can request re-indexing through Google Search Console to speed this up, but there is no way to force an immediate update.

Site title vs domain name#

The site title and your domain name are independent. A site with the domain greenvalley.com can have the site title “Green Valley Bakery” or anything else. They do not need to match, and in many cases they should not match exactly – your domain is short and URL-friendly, while your site title is the full brand name with proper capitalization and spacing.

If you are looking to change the actual domain your site runs on (not the display name), that is a different process entirely – see how to change your WordPress domain name.

Common issues after changing the site title#

The old title still appears in the header. Some themes hardcode the site name in the header template instead of pulling it from Settings > General. Check Appearance > Editor (for block themes) or Appearance > Customize > Site Identity (for classic themes) and make sure the header is using the dynamic site title, not a static text block.

The old title still shows in search results. Google caches page titles. After changing your site title, it can take a few days to a few weeks for Google to recrawl and update. Check your SEO plugin’s title template to confirm the change is reflected in the HTML, then wait for Google to catch up.

The tagline shows where you do not want it. Some themes display the tagline prominently below the site title in the header. If you want the title but not the tagline visible, you can either leave the tagline field empty in Settings > General (this removes it from both display and SEO metadata) or hide it with CSS in the theme while keeping it in the HTML for SEO purposes:

.site-description {
    clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
    position: absolute;
    height: 1px;
    width: 1px;
    overflow: hidden;
}

This makes the tagline invisible on the page but still accessible to screen readers and search engines. The exact CSS class depends on your theme – inspect the tagline element in your browser’s developer tools (F12) to find the right selector.

“Just another WordPress site” is showing. This is the default tagline that WordPress sets during installation. Go to Settings > General and replace it with a real description of your site – or clear it entirely if your SEO plugin handles the meta description separately.