Remove Author (But Leave Date) on TwentyTen Theme

first up, editing twentyten is a no-no, child theme is the way to go

https://go.rvoodoo.com/WPchild

You are in the right place…. you would copy that function to your child theme’s functions.php, and then edit it

function twentyten_posted_on() {
	printf( __( '<span class="%1$s">Posted on</span> %2$s' , 'twentyten' ),
		'meta-prep meta-prep-author',
		sprintf( '<a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="bookmark"><span class="entry-date">%3$s</span></a>',
			get_permalink(),
			esc_attr( get_the_time() ),
			get_the_date()
		),
		sprintf( '<span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="%1$s" title="%2$s">%3$s</a></span>',
			get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ),
			sprintf( esc_attr__( 'View all posts by %s', 'twentyten' ), get_the_author() ),
			get_the_author()
		)
	);
}

should do it really… just removing

<span class="meta-sep">by</span> %3$s',

from the output

twenty ten author removed from ‘posted on’

here is that function twentyten_posted_on() edited:

https://pastebin.com/M8rT60rV

thanks @alchymyth…. probably good to remove the unneeded stuff besides just pulling out the placeholder

Just copied and pasted the code from your link above in child theme functions.php (between the last “}” and the “endif.” Worked beautifully! Thank you so much!

This is by far the best thread I’ve found on this subject. It just occurred to me however, that I might just edit out the “meta-sep” and “author vcard” spans in my CSS using “display: none” and that worked. Is this an acceptable alternative to editing the code in functions.php, or would you guys recommend against it?

I might just edit out the “meta-sep” and “author vcard” spans in my CSS using “display: none” and that worked.

this often works; however, if you would just want to take the ‘on’ part of the ‘posted on’ out, this would not work with css.

general, there are pros and cons for the css method:

pro:
easy to return to the previous state;
little programming knowledge needed;
easy to apply to a child theme;
in certain situations, it might be a pro that the output is still visible in the html code in the browser.

cons:
higher load on the server (the php needs to be parsed, and the code generated);
extra bandwidth (the generated html code needs to be downloaded to the server);
visibility (the code is still visible in the browser);
extra work for the browser to hide the content;
unless you have a backup, going back to the previous state is difficult;

there is probably more, and what you do at the end, depends on the individual circumstances.

Thank you for the detailed response, alchmyth it certainly offers some considerations I hadn’t taken into account, particularly on the “cons” side of the ledger. I’ll definitely take this into account as I proceed. ??