Page Parent and Order Settings

In the page settings, you can set a parent page and change the order of your pages. This guide will cover how to use these settings.

The “Parent Page” setting organizes your pages into hierarchies. A “parent” is a top-level page with “child” pages nested under it.

For example, you could have an “About” page as a top-level (i.e., parent) page and then have child pages called “Life Story” and “My Dogs” under it. Under “My Dogs,” you could have another page titled “Rosco.” 

Parent and child page relationships are reflected in the page URLs. In the above example, the page URLs would be:

• http://example.wordpress.com/about/
  • http://example.wordpress.com/about/life-story/
  • http://example.wordpress.com/about/my-dogs/
    • http://example.wordpress.com/about/my-dogs/rosco/

There are no limits to how deeply you can nest pages.

To assign a parent page to the page you’re working on, take the following steps:

1. Visit your dashboard.
2. Click on Pages from the options on the left.
3. Click on the title of the page to open the editor.
4. In the settings sidebar on the right, locate the “Parent” setting.
5. Click the link next to this, which will say “None” if no parent page has been selected.
6. In the dropdown box, search for the name of the page you want to set as the parent and click on it.
7. Click the “Publish” or “Save” button at the top of the screen to save your change.

The new parent page will appear in the “Parent Page” section, with an “X” to remove the page:

Certain pages cannot be used as the Parent Page. Those pages include:

• Page URLs, such as “author,” “tag,” and “category.” They are reserved for archive page types.
• A page set to “Private” cannot be used as a Parent Page.

Using parent pages does not affect how pages appear in your site’s navigation menu. Visit our guide on how to Create Drop-Down Menus to learn how to make submenu items.

An exception is if you use your site’s default menu to display all pages and automatically update the menu with newly published pages. In that case, parent pages usually show in the menu with child pages as a drop-down. Not all themes display page hierarchies by default in the navigation menu.

Let’s say you have three pages: About, Photos, Contact

If you wanted About to appear first, you’d need to do the following:

1. Visit your dashboard.
2. Click on Pages from the options on the left.
3. Click on the title of the page to open the editor.
4. Open the page settings sidebar.

5. Click the ellipses (three dots) next to the page title and click on “Order” to reveal the Order option:

6. Put the number 1 in the box labeled “Order“. This tells WordPress to display this page first.
7. Click the “Publish” or “Save” button to save your change for that page.
8. Repeat the process for your other pages, but use consecutive numbers for the “Order” field: 2, 3, etc. This tells WordPress to display these pages second and third.

The use of the “Page Order” option does not affect how pages appear in your site’s navigation menu. Visit our guide on how to Reorder Menu Items. An exception is if you use your site’s default menu to display all pages and automatically update the menu with newly published pages. You can change the order in which your pages are displayed when using a default menu by using the “Page Order” option.