How to Display Top Level Parent and Child Pages in WordPress

Are you looking for a way to display the top level parent page as a heading and multiple levels of child pages below it? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to display top level parent and child pages in WordPress.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s page.php file or in a site-specific plugin:

<?php
$ancestors = get_post_ancestors($post);
$top_parent_id = end($ancestors);
if (!$top_parent_id) $top_parent_id = $post->ID;
?>

<h3 <?php if ($top_parent_id == $post->ID ) echo "class='current_page_item'"?> >
 <a href="<?php echo get_permalink($top_parent_id) ?>" title="<?php echo get_the_title($top_parent_id) ?>">
 <?php echo get_the_title($top_parent_id) ?>
 </a>
</h3>

<ul>
 <?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&child_of='.$top_parent_id); ?>
</ul>

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly add code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: 50+ best WooCommerce themes for your online store and how to create stunning optin forms in WordPress.