What Is a Parent Page in WordPress? A Beginner’s Guide to Website Structure

So you’re fiddling around in WordPress, trying to make your site look and feel a little more put-together — and then you hit the “Parent Page” setting.

What even is that?

Short answer: It helps you organize your pages into a hierarchy, basically like folders and subfolders. A parent page is the top-level one, and child pages are nested under it.

But let’s not stop at the short version. If you’re building a website — whether it’s for your side hustle, your photography portfolio, a small business, or just for fun- getting a grip on how pages relate to each other can seriously save you headaches down the line.

Let’s break it down in a way that makes sense.

Why WordPress Has “Parent Pages” at All

Think of a website as a tree. Not one of those skinny, sad trees, a big, beautiful branching one.

Each top-level page on your site — like “Home,” “About,” “Services,” “Blog,” “Contact” — is a branch. But what if you want to add more detail under one of those branches?

Let’s say you have an “About” page. You might want to tuck in a few extra pages under that, like:

• “My Story”
• “The Team”
• “What We Value”

Those are your child pages, and “About” becomes the parent.

It’s all about structure. It makes your site feel more organized, and that structure can also carry through into your URLs. That’s a subtle signal of professionalism and clarity, for humans and search engines.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Let’s go super practical for a second. Here’s how that structure plays out with actual page URLs:

Perl:

https://example.com/about/ https://example.com/about/my-story/ https://example.com/about/the-team/

You’re seeing the hierarchy in the web address. That’s not just nice to look at, it can help with navigation, SEO, and even just making your site easier to manage as it grows.

And yes, you can nest even deeper if you want. Something like:

Arduino:

https://example.com/about/the-team/jamie/

There’s no hard limit. But keep in mind, just because you can nest five levels deep doesn’t mean you should. More on that later.

How to Set a Parent Page in WordPress (Step-by-Step)

Okay, so how do you make a parent page? Super straightforward.

Here’s what to do:

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click Pages in the sidebar.
3. Click the title of the page you want to edit.
4. In the settings sidebar on the right, look for the Page Attributes or Parent setting.
5. Next to where it says “Parent,” click the dropdown.
6. Select the page you want to use as the parent.
7. Click Publish or Update to save.

That’s it.

Once you do that, the child page is officially nested under the parent. WordPress takes care of the rest, including updating the URL structure — assuming you’re using “pretty permalinks,” which most sites do by default now.

Important Quirks to Know

Not every page can be used as a parent. Here are the main exceptions:

• Private pages can’t be parents.
• Reserved URLs (like “author” or “category”) won’t show up in the list.
• If a page has been trashed or drafted but not published, you won’t be able to use it as a parent either.

So if you’re not seeing the page you want in the dropdown, double-check its status first.

Quick Note About the Sidebar

Can’t find the parent setting at all?

Click the little gear icon (⚙️) in the top right of the WordPress editor. That opens the sidebar settings.

Sometimes WordPress tucks things away if you’re working on a smaller screen or haven’t used the feature before.

Do Parent Pages Affect the Menu?

Nope — not automatically.

WordPress doesn’t rearrange your navigation menu just because you set up a page hierarchy.

So if you were hoping that making a page a “child” would magically create a drop-down menu in your site header… not quite.

You’ll need to do that manually in the Menu settings (under Appearance > Menus). But if you’re using a default menu (one that auto-adds new pages), some themes will show the hierarchy as nested items.

Either way, always preview your site after you make changes to be sure the menu looks how you want.

Page Order: Another Layer of Control

Want more control over how your pages appear when they’re listed? WordPress has a setting called “Order.” You can use it to manually rearrange the sequence of pages, mostly relevant if you’re displaying them with something like a page list widget or using a theme that respects page order.

Here’s how:

1. Go to your page editor.
2. In the sidebar, look for Page Attributes > Order.
3. Put a number in that box — lower numbers appear first.
4. Click Update.

So you might set “About” to 1, “Services” to 2, and “Contact” to 3. Totally up to you.

This won’t change your main menu — that still needs to be adjusted in the Menu settings — but it can control how things show up in lists, sidebars, and in-page navigation.

How Deep Should You Nest Pages?

This is a bit of a judgment call. WordPress will let you go nuts — nest child pages under child pages under child pages. But it’s not always a great idea.

Here’s why too much nesting can cause issues:

• Long URLs get unwieldy. /about/our-story/the-team/jamie/puppy-years? Yikes.
• Breadcrumbs (those little navigation helpers at the top of some themes) can become cluttered.
• Visitors can get lost. If someone has to click through six layers to find your contact info, they’re probably not going to bother.

As a general rule, try to stick to two or three levels max. Enough to stay organized, not so much that it feels like an internet scavenger hunt.

Use Case Examples: When to Use Parent Pages

Let’s talk real-life scenarios. When does using a parent page setup help?

Example 1: Services with Subservices

You run a design studio. Your top-level page is “Services.” Under that, you’ve got:

• “Logo Design”
• “Website Design”
• “Brand Strategy”

Each of those has its page. Boom — makes sense.

Example 2: Personal Blog

You’ve got a blog about your travels, your pets, and your cooking experiments. You could do:

Blog

• Travel
• Food
• Pets

Then inside “Pets,” you could add one page per animal. Yes, even Rosco.

Example 3: Documentation or Help Center

If you’re building a knowledge base:

Help Center

• Getting Started
• Troubleshooting
• Account Settings

Keeps everything tidy and easy to find.

Troubleshooting Common Headaches

Page disappears from the URL or shows a 404?

Check that both the parent and child pages are published.

Can’t assign a parent page?

Make sure the page you want to use is published and not set to “Private.”

Parent settings not showing up?

Click the gear icon to reveal the sidebar. If it’s still not there, make sure you’re editing a page and not a post — posts don’t have parent-child

relationships in WordPress.

Summary: Why You Should Care

Using parent pages isn’t just about being tidy. It’s about making your site easier to manage, easier to grow, and easier for your visitors to use.

Here’s what parent pages give you:

• Cleaner structure
• Logical page URLs
• Better organization as your site expands
• A more professional, polished feel

You’re not just slapping up content anymore — you’re building a system that can scale with you.

One Final Tip

Don’t overthink it.

Start simple. Create the main pages you need. Then, if something starts to feel cluttered, that’s your cue to consider splitting it up and using parent pages.

Think of it like organizing your closet, you don’t need color-coded bins on day one. But when your site starts to feel like a mess, a little structure goes a long way.

And hey, if you’re already organizing content in your brain that way, WordPress is more than ready to help you turn it into a well-oiled, beautifully nested machine.