Can you make the hook_menu() item title different from the page title?

Question

I'm building a menu with hook_menu().

When you're building the array for this you specify a title, which is then passed to the page you call and becomes the page title. It's also the menu item's displayed name.

$items['somewhere/something'] = array(
 'title' => 'Something',
 'description' => 'something else',
);

This would generate a menu link called "Something", and the page title would be the same. Is there a way to make the menu item's name one thing, but pass along a different title for the page?

I know I can use drupal_set_title() in the actual hook_page() function, but I'd have to perform an additional database pull to make that happen in this case, and I'd rather not do that.

Answer 1

No there's no way to do it with hook_menu().

The simplest way is what you suggested, using drupal_set_title() and the most efficient is what dobeerman suggested above: use phptemplate_preprocess_page() and alter $vars accordingly.

Honestly though, I would just use drupal_set_title() even if there is that extra db call you mentioned (unconfirmed). This is a tiny optimization and if performance is important to you, you should have some caching mechanism in place (Varnish, Boost, etc) and this extra call won't make a difference!

Answer 2

To set a different title for the page (the one used in the <title> tag), you have two possibilities:

• In your module, implement MODULE_preprocess_page()and use it to alter the value of $variables['head_title']. The documentation page for template_preprocess_page() reports which values are available in the $variables array.
• Install the Page Title module, which allows you change the title set for a page. It allows you to execute a PHP snippet to set the page title, and it also uses tokens.

Using drupal_set_title(), you don't set just the page title or the title visible in the title bar; you set both, as reported in the documentation.

Set the title of the current page, for display on the page and in the title bar.

Parameters

$title
Optional string value to assign to the page title; or if set to NULL (default), leaves the current title unchanged.

Return value

The updated title of the current page.