How to Use WordPress Child Pages When Building a Website

When building a WordPress-powered website, you don’t have to place all of your pages on the same level. The content management system (CMS) supports multiple levels of page hierarchy. You can use child pages, for instance. Child pages look like standard pages but feature a lower level of hierarchy. Depending on the purpose of your website, you may want to use child pages.

Key Takeaways

• You can use WordPress child pages to organize your website’s content.
• You can also create child categories
• Bloggers also refer to child pages and sub-pages
• Search engines may understand how pages are related when using parent pages and child pages.

What Is a Child Page?

Not to be confused with a child theme, a child page is a WordPress page assigned under another page. You can assign it under another page, whether creating a new page or editing an existing one. It will then become a child page.

Child pages allow for parent-child hierarchy. Each child page has a parent page. Parent pages are simply the pages under which child pages are assigned.

Benefits of Using Child Pages

A page in WordPress usually refers to the page post type. It is one of the default pre-defined WordPress post types.

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You can use child pages to organize your website’s content. Rather than placing all your pages on the same level, you can assign specific pages under relevant parent pages. For example, if your website sells products, you can create a parent page titled “Products.” You can create a child page for each product while assigning them under the “Products” page.

For any business-related website, you may want to create a parent page titled “About Us.” You can assign relevant pages like “Meet Our Team” and “Company History” under this parent page. With child pages, you can organize your website’s content. If a particular page covers a general topic, you can assign relevant child pages under it.

WordPress supports child categories as well.

A child category is a lower-level category assigned under a parent category. But the problem with child categories is that they only work with posts. You can place posts in one or more child categories but can’t place pages in them. You’ll need child pages for a parent-child hierarchy with pages.

Child pages offer meaningful search engine optimization (SEO) benefits. When you create a child page, it will retain the URL slug of the parent page under which it’s assigned.

The child page will still have a unique URL. Rather than example.com/child-page-name, though, its URL will be formatted as example.com/parent-page-name/child-page-name. In other words, the child page will feature the parent page’s URL slug, followed by its own URL slug.

Because child pages retain their parent pages’ URL slugs, search engines can better understand them. They’ll recognize child pages as being relevant to their parent pages. Search engines will perceive parent pages as covering general topics, and they’ll perceive child pages as covering specific content that’s related to those topics.

How to use Child Pages

Creating child pages in WordPress is a breeze. Using the Gutenberg or Classic editor, you can create them like all other pages. Both editors have an option to assign pages under a parent page, thus allowing you to create child pages.

Using the Gutenberg editor, you can assign a page under a parent page by selecting the “Page Attributes” option in the right-hand column. Clicking the empty “Parent Page” field will allow you to choose the parent page.

You can also assign a child page under a parent page in the Classic editor. The Classic editor has a similar “Page Attributes” option in the right-hand column but without its Gutenberg counterpart’s empty “Parent Page” field. The “Page Attributes” option will reveal a drop-down menu for “Parent.” You can click this drop-down menu to choose the parent page.

Tips for Using Child Pages

You should customize your website’s navigation menu using child pages to show their hierarchy. Navigation menus in WordPress can be customized with a hierarchy. When you create a new navigation menu in the CMS, you can add pages and posts to it.

However, you’ll need to stagger child pages in the navigation menu to show their hierarchy.

After adding a child page directly below the parent page on the navigation menu, click the former and drag it to the right. The child page should snap into place so it’s slightly to the right of the parent page. WordPress will also give the child page the “sub-item” label.

The “sub-item” label denotes a sub-level page or post, such as a child page. When hovering your cursor over a parent page on the navigation menu, it will expand to reveal links to the child pages with the “sub-item” label. Without the “sub-item” label, visitors may not distinguish between your website’s parent and child pages.

You can assign child pages under other child pages for three or more levels of hierarchy. Pages can function as both child and parent pages. Pages are neither child nor parent by default. A page becomes a child page when it’s assigned under another page. A page becomes a parent page when another page is assigned under it.

You can create three or more levels of hierarchy by assigning a child page under another child page. If your website sells clothing, you may want to create a top-level page for “Products,” followed by two middle-level pages for “Men’s Clothing” and “Women’s Clothing.”

You can create bottom-level pages for your site’s various products while assigning them under the “Men’s Clothing” or “Women’s Clothing” pages.

Keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a child post. You can’t assign posts under other posts. For post hierarchy, your only option is to use child categories. On the other hand, you can use child pages for page hierarchy.

You don’t have to use a flat, single-level page hierarchy when building a WordPress-powered website. Instead, you can use child pages. Child pages are defined by their lower-level hierarchy. They are assigned under another page, which is the parent page.

Using child pages with WordPress will allow you to organize your website’s content and improve its SEO neatly.