How to change your WordPress site title

Go to Settings → General in your WordPress dashboard, type the new name into Site Title, click Save Changes, then load your homepage in a private window. That works on every WordPress install, whatever the theme. If the new name appears in the header and the browser tab, you’re finished.

If it doesn’t appear, the save almost certainly worked. The word “title” covers several separate things on a WordPress site, and each one is set in a different place. Most of this guide is about finding the one that is actually wrong.

Which title are you actually trying to change?

Start by finding where the wrong name is showing, because that tells you which control sets it. The site title is one setting. The header, the browser tab and Google can each show something different.

Where you see the name	What controls it
Site-wide name, feeds, store emails	Settings → General → Site Title
Text in the header	The theme: the Site Title block, Customize → Site Identity, or a page builder’s header
Headline of one page or post	That page’s own title (the Title block)
Browser tab and page source	The HTML <title>, often written by an SEO plugin
WooCommerce order emails	The {site_title} placeholder, which reads Settings → General
Google search results	Google, using your pages as input

If you wanted to change one page’s headline, or hide it, you need the page editor, not this setting. Our guide on hiding page titles in WordPress explains the difference between the Title block and the Site Title block.

How to change the site title in Settings → General

This is the main route, and every other route saves to the same value. WordPress stores that value as the blogname option. WordPress.org’s Settings General documentation says themes commonly show it in the layout and the browser title bar, and that WordPress uses it to identify the site in feeds.

1. Log in with an Administrator account. Other roles can’t save core settings.
2. Open Settings → General.
3. Copy the current Site Title into a note. A setting has no revision history, so that note is how you undo the change.
4. Type the new name in Site Title, with the exact spelling and capitalisation of the brand.
5. Leave Tagline alone unless you mean to change it too. It’s a separate field for a short description, and many themes print it under the name.
6. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen.
7. Open the homepage in a private window and check the header and the browser tab.

The WordPress Address and Site Address fields are on the same screen. Don’t touch them. They set the site’s URL, and getting them wrong can lock you out of your own dashboard. Renaming the site doesn’t change your domain, permalinks or URLs.

How to change it in a block theme’s Site Editor

Block themes such as Twenty Twenty-Four and Twenty Twenty-Five give you two more routes, and both save back to Settings → General. WordPress.org’s Site Title block documentation says that editing the block and saving the template changes the name everywhere it appears.

1. Go to Appearance → Editor.
2. Open the Identity section and edit Site Title there. Or open the header template part and click the Site Title block on the canvas.
3. Type the new name.
4. Click Save. Until you save the template, nothing changes on the live site.
5. Go back to Settings → General to confirm the field shows the new name.

WordPress.org’s Site Editor Identity documentation says the Identity section only exists when a block theme is active. If your Appearance menu has no Editor item, you have a classic theme. Use the next section.

Two blocks look the same as the Site Title block on the canvas but behave differently. A Heading block with the name typed into it is just static text. Editing it changes the header but not the site title, and changing the site title won’t update it. A Title block shows the current page’s title, and editing it renames that page only. If your header ignores your changes, click the text and check the block name in the toolbar.

How to change it in a classic theme’s Customizer

Classic themes usually show the same fields under Appearance → Customize → Site Identity, with a live preview next to them. Edit Site Title, then click Publish. Changing the preview alone saves nothing.

The same panel has a Display Site Title and Tagline checkbox, which most themes include. If the name is saved correctly but missing from the header, that box is probably unticked, or the theme is showing a logo instead. The reverse also happens. One WooCommerce shop owner on Reddit found a large, unwanted site-title link above their menu and removed it from Site Identity. For header layout changes that go beyond the name, see our guide to modifying a WordPress header.

Page builders such as Elementor and Divi often build the header in their own editor. In that case the header shows whatever the builder template contains, so edit it there.

Why the old name still shows after you save

Work through these checks in order. Each one rules out a layer, and the order keeps you from clearing caches over and over when the cause is something else.

1. Confirm the saved value

Reload Settings → General. If the field still shows the old name, the save failed. Skip to “When to stop and get help” below. If the field shows the new name, the setting is fine and something further along is showing the old one.

2. An SEO plugin is writing the browser tab title

The text in the browser tab comes from the HTML <title>. On most sites an SEO plugin writes it. In Yoast SEO, the Website name field under Yoast SEO → Settings → Site basics overrides the WordPress setting in Yoast’s output. The homepage also has its own SEO title. Yoast’s homepage guide says to edit it under Settings → Content types → Homepage when the homepage lists your latest posts, or in that page’s own Yoast search appearance settings when you use a static homepage. Rank Math, AIOSEO and SEOPress have similar settings in their own menus.

Check that only one plugin is writing titles. In one wordpress.org support thread, a site kept its old title after the setting was changed. Clearing WP Fastest Cache didn’t help. The cause was several plugins with title settings that clashed.

3. The page has two titles, or none

Open the page, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the source, and search for <title. There should be exactly one result. Yoast’s troubleshooting page for SEO titles lists a missing or duplicated <title> as a source-code problem. Older themes that don’t support WordPress’s title-tag feature can print their own title from header.php.

Yoast has a Force rewrite titles option for those themes, but warns it may considerably slow the site. It also warns that theme updates overwrite edits made directly to theme files. A hard-coded header belongs in a child theme, and that is usually work for a developer.

4. A cache is serving the old page

If a private window shows the new name, only your own browser was out of date. If it doesn’t, clear the caches in this order: your caching plugin, then your host’s cache, then your CDN. Clearing the browser cache doesn’t clear the server’s copy. WordPress.org notes that managed hosts often cache pages even when no caching plugin is installed. Our article on pages that won’t update covers each layer and how to clear it.

5. Google still shows the old name

Google doesn’t read your title setting. It builds title links and site names from your pages. Google’s title link documentation says it creates them automatically, may rewrite titles it considers outdated or unclear, and that recrawling and reprocessing can take a few days to a few weeks. For the site name, Google recommends WebSite structured data with name and url on the homepage. Google still makes the final choice. Yoast and other SEO plugins usually output this markup from their site name field.

Once the live page is correct, request indexing in Search Console’s URL Inspection tool and wait. In one wordpress.org thread, a site owner spent hours resetting and rebuilding before learning that re-indexing was all the site needed. Reddit users report waits of 10 days or more. One still saw no change three weeks after adding site-name markup. If Google shows leftover demo text from an imported template, check the Tagline and the homepage’s SEO title before you resubmit.

Usually the hard part of this job is the diagnosis, not typing the name. If you’d rather send the new name in chat and have it changed, checked on the live page and reported back, that is one of the routine website edits SiteSelf handles. A settings change like this needs only the SiteSelf Connector plugin.

Changing the title from WP-CLI or the REST API

If you have SSH access, WP-CLI’s option command reads and writes the setting directly. Read the old value first so you can put it back.

wp option get blogname
wp option update blogname "Acme Dental"
wp option update blogdescription "Family dentistry in Leeds"

blogdescription is the tagline. On a Multisite network, each site has its own title, so point the command at the right site with --url=. Run without it, the command changes the main site. Our explainer on multi site websites covers how networks keep each site’s settings apart.

The REST API settings endpoint calls the same values title and description. An authenticated POST to /wp-json/wp/v2/settings with a new title changes the name, and you can use an application password as the credential. Whichever route you use, a success response only proves the value was saved. Load the live page afterwards to confirm visitors see the new name.

When to stop and get help

Hand it to your host or a developer if any of these apply:

• The setting won’t save. The usual causes are a host firewall rule returning a 403, a conflict with a plugin or theme, or a leftover object-cache.php or advanced-cache.php file in wp-content. Ask your host to check its firewall logs before you start disabling plugins.
• The title is hard-coded in the theme. Editing header.php on a live site without a child theme risks breaking the layout, and the next theme update will undo your edit.
• The name changed and nobody changed it. That can be a sign the site has been hacked, especially if Google shows a name you never used. Read our guide on what to do when WordPress is hacked before you just rename it back.