Displaying child pages of the current page

8 Apr, 2008 MarkB Navigation

A prime feature of most CMS systems is that pages have a strong hierarchy – plenty of pages, sub-pages and sub-sub-sub pages. Depending on exactly what you want to accomplish, there’s a main means of doing this that will help you have a nicely dynamic navigation area.

At first glance

wp_list_pages('title_li=&child_of='.$post->ID);

…would be an option, except that when you end up on a child page, the list disappears because the current page no longer has any children.

Enter the solution:

<?
if(wp_list_pages('child_of='.$post->ID.'&echo=0&exclude=2')) {
echo "<ul>";
wp_list_pages('title_li=&child_of='.$post->ID.'&exclude=2');
echo "</ul>";
}
elseif(get_the_title($post->post_parent) != the_title(' ' , ' ',false)) {
echo "<ul>";
wp_list_pages('child_of='.$post->post_parent.'&title_li=&exclude=2');
echo "</ul>";
} ?>

What this does is:

Generate a list of sibling pages if there are no child pages present
If there are child pages, they’ll be shown

This is really useful for creating a dynamic navigation that constantly allows users to move to other pages on the site and will also allow your client or the end user to create pages and sub pages freely without having to worry about digging through code to update the navigation area.

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8 Comments

Philippine Lawyer
August 26, 2008 • 7:33 pm

I have been searching for hours for code like this.

It’s almost what I want.

Could you please show the modification to show this code only on pages that have child pages?

Right now it shows on every page.

Thanks
David
MarkB
September 5, 2008 • 9:28 am

Hi David

The plugin will display child pages whenever there are child pages to display. If there are no child pages, then nothing will display…

This is how it works for me anyways?
Nimit
August 19, 2010 • 12:52 pm

Awesome.. Thanks..
eChamp
January 16, 2011 • 1:01 am

I’ve always used wp_nav_menu to set up different menus. Your way is surely an easy approach.
DESIGNfromWITHIN
January 27, 2011 • 4:10 pm

Thank you so mutch, your code saved my days of time!
Brent
February 18, 2011 • 4:36 am

You have no idea how long I have been searching for this solution! Thanks!
Johannes
March 31, 2011 • 4:22 pm

Perfect C=
thats exactly what im looking for.
nice job
Ljuboja
December 12, 2011 • 9:54 am

Hi,

how to modify code to show only one specific parent page childs?

tnx