Suggested label change for "Stick this post to the front page"

[designsimply]

In the Publish meta box, it would be more clear to say "Stick this post to the top of the front page" compared to saying "Stick this post to the front page".

[ocean90]

I prefer the same label as we use in Quick Edit "Make this post sticky". Sticky posts aren't always on front page, even less on top.

[designsimply]

Thanks. Re-patched with 18400.1.diff.

[danielbachhuber]

Refresh patch against trunk

[nacin]

The problem with "Make this post sticky" is it doesn't describe what "sticky" means. I understand the brevity in Quick Edit, but it should probably be descriptive when editing a post. Otherwise it lacks any meaning for the user.

"Stick this post to the front page" seems OK to me as-is. It is a good balance of descriptiveness and clarity. "Stick this post to the top of the front page" feels less accurate as you can have multiple sticky posts (it also causes awkward text wrapping in English). Also, sticky posts *are* always on the front page, so that part isn't inaccurate either. Even if posts_per_page is 10, if you have 11 sticky posts, they'll all display.

[nacin]

designsimply, I'm guessing this came out of seeing some feedback from users, though it was pretty easy for ocean90 to pivot things to another string, so I'm not sure :-)

I wouldn't mind considering other variants; I'm just not sure anything so far proposed is any better. While some users might be less confused with "to the top", other users might be more confused.

[nacin]

Getting this out of 3.9; we can bring it back in if there is a consensus for changing it.

[celloexpressions]

Replying to nacin:

Also, sticky posts *are* always on the front page, so that part isn't inaccurate either. Even if posts_per_page is 10, if you have 11 sticky posts, they'll all display.

I think the issue here is that the user may have a static front page, in which case "Stick this post to the front page" is inaccurate. Themes also do special things with sticky posts sometimes (Twenty Fourteen, even), so we should keep it as generic as possible. I would call that an edge case, but the default theme does it out-of-the-box (where, incidentally, the "front page" statement is valid). In fact the best solution might be to lose some clarity and go with "Make this post sticky", since "sticky" can mean different things in different themes (although the general idea is almost always the same).

[designsimply]

designsimply, I'm guessing this came out of seeing some feedback from users

Correct.

I think the issue here is that the user may have a static front page, in which case "Stick this post to the front page" is inaccurate.

Correct again.

[helen]

#30248 was marked as a duplicate.

[philiparthurmoore]

In #30248 I've proposed to change "front" to "home", since front is incorrect. At a minimum I'd advocate for this change because it's in line with how themes treat the terms "home" and "front". As has been mentioned above, front as it's used now is incorrect when a static front page is used. Consistency here with the Customizer and other WordPress admin areas would be nice.

[kellenmace]

I'm proposing we change this wording on the single post edit screen from "Stick this post to the front page" to "Stick this post to the posts page".

Reasons why:

1. When users are using a static front page and a different page for their posts, the current "Stick this post to the front page" wording is inaccurate and misleading.
2. The "front" and "home" terms can be confusing to end users, as noted by others on this ticket. We can avoid that confusion altogether by referring to it as the "posts page" instead.
3. Using "posts page" makes this label consistent with the "— Posts Page" label that is applied to that page on the Pages edit.php screen.

[kellenmace]

Use "Stick this post to the posts page" wording

[Presskopp]

related #42468

[Presskopp]

I just came across this 'issue' explaining a customer what he needs to do and I find the solution @kellenmace offered very helpful (18400.3.diff). The arguments have been made, "Stick this post to the front page" can be inaccurate and misleading. +1 from me, and it's never too late.

[desrosj]

Before moving forward with any text changes, I would like to see someone break down all of the places that the "sticky" concept is now surfaced in the UI of the block and site editors. The last suggestion was 7 years ago, which was a year before the block editor shipped in Core.

The Query Loop block and maybe the posts list block likely have new contexts where sticky is presented to users, so we should consider those here as well.

[Presskopp]

Replying to desrosj:

I think you're reaching too far. This ticket is exclusively about clarifying the wording in connection with the front page. There are only 2 strings that this concerns.

The second one is:

Blog posts can be “stickied”, a feature that places them at the top of the front page of posts, keeping it there until new sticky posts are published.

As you can see it speaks about the "front page of posts".

Another string is mentioning

... making it stay at the top of your blog ...

[sabernhardt]

GB62782 just added "Pin this post to the top of the blog" as help text for the Sticky block editor control (though GB63386 notes that the control is more difficult to find now). It probably would be good to coordinate both, so that the Classic Editor uses the same string (with any improvements) as its label in the next release, too.

Other translations:

• ​strings including "stick" (note that some of those strings relate to CSS sticky positioning, and GB63999 just changed the "Blog posts can be “stickied”..." text for the Query Loop block to "Sticky posts always appear first, regardless of their publish date.")
• ​additional strings in admin

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/18400

[chaion07]

Thanks @designsimply for reporting this. We reviewed this Ticket during a recent bug-scrub session. Here's the summary of the feedback received:

1. We believe the need for dev-feedback before changing the sticky text for metabox.
2. We also need to ping Stephen to check if this Ticket falls in their radar for 6.7 or not.

Thanks.

Props to @mukesh27

Cheers!

[sabernhardt]

I marked the ticket for copy review.

The ​new Gutenberg wording is still "Pin this post to the top of the blog" since GB62782, and I would prefer consistency instead of creating two new strings in 6.7.

[peterwilsoncc]

I've converted this to a task. As the two editors are using different strings for the same thing, it would be good to unify them to avoid additional load on translators.

[Presskopp]

I don't think "Pin this post to the top of the blog" is the best choice, because, as mentioned above, a sticky post can be shown anywhere posts are listed which not necessarily is "the blog".

[desrosj]

This still needs more discussion. 6.7 RC1 is due out any moment. Punting to 6.8.

[audrasjb]

As per today's bug scrub: it would be better to see a more universal wording here: maybe something as simple as "Stick this post" or "Make this post sticky".

The current Gutenberg label is "Pin this post to the top of the blog"
Which is, I think, incorrect (the "top of the blog part").

Also, we should stay with stick/sticky because that's used everywhere in our User Docs.
This should be addressed on both Core and Gutenberg side.

[JeffPaul]

I concur that for now keeping with stick / sticky is best given proliferation of that across core/docs. With that in mind, inheriting from copy that exists on Settings > Reading perhaps we normalize to something like "Stick this post to the homepage"?

[audrasjb]

Replying to JeffPaul:

I concur that for now keeping with stick / sticky is best given proliferation of that across core/docs. With that in mind, inheriting from copy that exists on Settings > Reading perhaps we normalize to something like "Stick this post to the homepage"?

But sticky posts aren't displayed only on the "homepage". They are also displayed in query loops, post archives and so on. I'd rather go with "Make this post sticky" so it's relevant everywhere.

[JeffPaul]

But sticky posts aren't displayed only on the "homepage". They are also displayed in query loops, post archives and so on. I'd rather go with "Make this post sticky" so it's relevant everywhere.

Yeah, good point, "Make this post sticky" is probably best given the broad spread of places this could go.

[sainathpoojary]

I have opened ​issue in Gutenberg in order to address this issue.

[ankitkumarshah]

I tried to apply the patches but it didn't work. It may be because over the time file has changed. I have added an updated patch.

[Mamaduka]

Re-sharing from Gutenberg issue for visibility.

The wording for this option has been updated several times. The "Pin this post to the top of the blog" is just the latest version.

Most recent: ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/62782

Previous work:

• ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/13120
• ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/3072.

[joemcgill]

"Sticky" is a word that I would describe as one of those WordPressism that is characteristic of the software. I think we should lean into these sorts of idiosyncrasies rather than trying to make them more generic.

While "sticky" posts were originally implemented to ensure a post would stay at the top of a blog homepage, it's a fundamental part of how WordPress retrieves a list of posts and impacts more than just the position in a specific page or context.

Also, this ticket was originally referring to the text shown in the old Publish Box of the past editor (PBotP™). Given that most of the current use cases being discussed relate only to UI exposed in the @wordpress/editor package, it seems like this would be better to close this issue in favor of keeping conversation in the appropriate repo.

[joemcgill]

Seeing as how this has not really progressed, and most of the conversation in the past year has centered around UI text changes that need to be handled in the editor, which is developed in the Gutenberg repo, I'm going to close this ticket as "maybelater" and encourage further changes to the UI text be discussed in ​https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/69300.

There is validity in wanting to try to create some consistency with the translatable strings used across different places where we reference "sticky", but I don't think a single string can be decided in a ticket like this and ensure that it will apply across all of the places in the UI where "sticky" posts are referenced.