WordPress loop showing incorrect post titles in custom theme

Other Questions Wordpress
1

I’m working on a custom WordPress theme and running into a weird issue with post titles. I created a blog page template that should show recent posts, but the titles are all mixed up.

Here’s my current code:

<?php
   $blog_query = new WP_Query(array('post_type' => 'post'));
   if ($blog_query->have_posts()) {
      while ($blog_query->have_posts()) {
         $blog_query->the_post();
?>

<article class="post_item">
   <h3><a href="<?php echo get_permalink(); ?>"><?php echo get_the_title(); ?></a></h3>
   <span class="post_date"><?php echo get_the_date('M j, Y'); ?></span>
   <?php echo get_the_content(); ?>
</article>

<?php
      }
   }
   wp_reset_postdata();
?>

My posts are named “First Article”, “Second Article”, “Third Article”, etc. But when they show up on the page, the first post displays “Second Article” as the title, the second shows “Third Article”, and the last one shows the actual page name instead of the post title.

I tried switching to different title functions but that just made the titles disappear completely. I know there’s probably a better way to query posts but I’m not sure what’s causing this title offset problem. Has anyone seen this before?

2

This is a common issue related to the global post object in WordPress. It seems that another query on your page is affecting the global $post variable, which can result in titles displaying incorrectly. To resolve this, ensure you are consistently using the custom loop’s context. Instead of calling get_the_title() directly, you can specify the post ID from your WP_Query object by using get_the_title($blog_query->post->ID). Alternatively, you could save the original global post using global $post; $original_post = $post; and then restore it after your loop. This will prevent other queries from getting in the way of your custom template.

3

I’ve hit this exact problem before. It’s usually theme functions or plugins running queries without properly resetting the global post data. Something calls the_post() but forgets wp_reset_postdata(), which messes up the global $post object. I’d switch to get_posts() instead of WP_Query since you’re just showing a simple list. Try $posts = get_posts(array('numberposts' => -1)); then loop with foreach($posts as $post). Don’t forget setup_postdata($post) inside the loop before using template tags. Also check your theme’s header.php and active plugins for custom queries without proper cleanup. SEO plugins and custom widgets are common culprits for this title offset issue.

4

Same thing happened to me last month. Your code looks fine, but there’s probably another query running before this one that isn’t cleaning up properly. Try adding global $post; $temp_post = $post; before your WP_Query, then $post = $temp_post; wp_reset_postdata(); after the loop. This saved the original post context when I had title mixups.