All the template available on this site allow you to easily change many text labels by setting a shortcode option. See this FAQ on how to use this feature. This is a great easy to use feature when you just need to change a label while be displayed in the template. However, sometimes you need change the text label every where the text label is used throughout Connections. Luckily this is very easy to accomplish with Connections and here’s how… First, install the Say What? plugin.
After you install and activate the Say What? plugin there will be a new menu item added under the Tools admin menu named Text changes.
When you go to this page for the first time there will not be much of anything to see, no instructions or anything to guide you on what to do next. Do not let this discourage you because it is a very simple to use tool. The first step is to identify the text label you want to change in Connections. For the purposes of this QuickTip, we’ll assume you want to change the text label for the Biographical Info metabox in the admin.
Go to the Tools : Text changes admin page and click the Add New button.
After you click the button you’ll b presented with a new screen asking for the Original string, Text Domain, Text context and Replacement string. The Original string is where you enter the text label from Connections, in this case it will be “Biographical Info”, without the quotes. The Replacement string will be anything you want. We’ll change it to “Business Information”, again, without the quotes. Explaining the Domain option is out of scope for this QuickTip, but basically it is the plugin ID for text replacement for translations. This ID for Connections is “connections”, without the quotes. The Text context field, leave it blank. After you fill in the the form, it should look like the screen capture below.
Click the Add button. Now visit the Connections : Add Entry admin page and scroll to the “Biographical Info” metabox. You should now see the text label has been changed to “Business Information”.
The great thing about using the Say What? plugin is that making text changes which are update safe. You can even use this plugin to change text label in plugins other than Connections, you only need to identify the what the plugin Domain is. Additionally, this will change “Biographical Info” in any templates that show it. If the template shows the “Biographical Info” text label and it has the option to to change it, you can still use that option to override the changes made by the Say What? plugin.
Now, this is pretty important…
This QuickTip will not work with many strings [text] in the templates as this QuickTip pertains to the core Connections plugin. So, with templates, there is an alternative method. To learn more about that alternative method, please see this FAQ.