Mysterious Untitled_# Posts in WordPress (Solved)

HOWTOs Web Development WordPress

The Issue:

I recently ran into an issue where I saw a number of posts showing up in WordPress called “Unititled_1”, “Unititled_2” and so on.

No author, no content, nothing that gave me any real clue…until I looked in the postmeta and saw gravity form IDs related to it as well as a value for one of my form fields.

That gave me enough information to then look at the form and to check all the form field types. Sure enough – one of my set of checkboxes were not the standard form fields – it was marked as a “Custom Field” form field. Therefore – every time someone filled out and submitted the form, a new post with only the poset meta for that custom field was created.

Mystery Solved.

The Solution:

Verify you also see the custom field data either by looking at the DB or by going to Screen Options > Custom Fields (checked) and then look at the meta data there. Once you verify which form, and which field ID is responsible for this – edit the form, and switch the form field type.

Note:

You will want to do an export before removing the field so if you need to recreate that field input – you will have the data. (Once you delete the field – the data will also be deleted.

2 thoughts on “Mysterious Untitled_# Posts in WordPress (Solved)”

  1. Justine

    Thank you so much for this information! I still can’t seem to find which field ID it is. It’s definitely coming from my signup form as I deleted all the posts yesterday, I received a sign up this morning and there was another untitled post on my page ! Are you able to explain a bit further on how to find the field? Thanks again.

  2. Stephane

    For those wondering how to find the field creating problem.
    1/ Don’t rely on the small icon in the form. A custom field can be hidden behind a text icon (it was my case)
    2/ While being on the field setting pane (as the screenshot Jennifer is showing), select each field one by one.
    3/ One of the field will be a custom field, despite showing another icon in the form.
    4/ Replace the field, save the form and you’re set!

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