Ignoring words in page titles such as those starting with “The…”

Ignoring “the” or adding an extra index entry for the first letter of the subsequent word after “the” will require you do do some PHP coding. There is a filter called a_z_listing_item_index_letter that returns the letter(s) you want the item indexed under. This does not affect the sorting inside each letter section, so all the titles beginning with “The” in the T section will be grouped together.

Your filter will want to look similar to:

add_filter( 'a_z_listing_item_index_letter', 'add_extra_a_z_entry_for_titles_beginning_with_the', 10, 3 );
function add_extra_a_z_entry_for_titles_beginning_with_the( $indices, $item, $display) {
    $title = apply_filters( "a_z_listing_get_item_title_for_display__{$display}", '', $item );
    $title_parts = explode( ' ', $title );
    if ( preg_match ( '^The$', $title_parts[0], 'i' ) && count( $title_parts ) > 1 ) {
        // this line adds an extra index entry..
        $indices[] = mb_substr( $title_parts[1], 0, 1 );
        // this line replaces the existing index entry, for ignoring The entirely..
        // $indices = array( mb_substr( $title_parts[1], 0, 1 ) );
    }
    return $indices;
}

Note this is a quick rough draft and will likely be broken – it is indended to be a jumping-off point for you to expand upon.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by Dani Llewellyn. Reason: Add ignoring The in titles as an extra example