Remove ‘Private:’ from bbPress Private Forum and Topic Titles

Helpfully, and in some cases, annoyingly, WordPress, by default, prepends the text ‘Private: ‘ to the titles of private posts. While this may be helpful for the user, sometimes it is unnecessary. In the case for bbPress, it may get tiresome to see ‘Private: ‘ everywhere, and for logged in users with permissions to see said forums and topics, it is redundant. Luckily, WordPress provides the handy private_title_format filter which can be used to control the format of titles for private posts.

The Code

The below code, when placed in a site specific plugin, will remove the ‘Private: ‘ text from private forums and topics:

add_filter('private_title_format', 'my_private_title_format', 10, 2);
function my_private_title_format($format, $post)
{
	if($post instanceof WP_Post and ($post->post_type === 'forum' || $post->post_type === 'topic'))
	{
		$format = '%s';
	}
	return $format;
}

Note that this can be adapted to apply to any post type, or post types that are not forum and topic. Simply, change the post type checks in the if statement to target the desired post type(s).

-John Havlik