Parent page missing in page attributes

As an option, I would first try to manually adjust the Order from either the Edit or Quick Edit view. Make Home = 0, then increase the number which will place them in order downward.

Next, I would change the status of the published page (possible parent and child page) to a draft and save. So you have a page with Order = 1 (or anything other than 0) and a status of draft.

Do this for both the parent and the child page and force a refresh in your browser (ctrl+shift+r) then try and edit the page and see if the dropdown is under the page attributes.

I have tested these on new installs and it works along with previous workarounds. This doesn’t mean every server setup or database setup is the same.

Finally, there is the tech/dev application which has worked every time. It’s not hard, all you need to do is FTP into your directory or use File Manager in cPanel or whatever management system you have and make the following update to your CORE WordPress Code.

(IMPORTANT: Remember to make a backup of the file before saving or you may have a mess on your hands)

1. Go to Line 290 (or close to 290, depends on your version) in /wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-posts-controller.php.
2. Look for: $posts_query = new WP_Query();
   $query_result = $posts_query->query( $query_args );
3. Replace with: $posts_query = new WP_Query();
   if (isset($query_args[‘orderby’]) && is_string($query_args[‘orderby’]) && $query_args[‘orderby’] == ‘menu_order’) {
   $query_args[‘orderby’] = [‘menu_order’ => ‘ASC’, ‘ID’ => ‘ASC’];
   }
   $query_result = $posts_query->query( $query_args );
4. Save File and refresh your pages and test

Screenshot: https://www.screencast.com/t/SqEjkt6yiOGk

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by colter. Reason: Added Dev/Tech solution
• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by colter.

@colter workaround #1 worked great for me… simple. Thanks!

This is terrible.

The drop down parent page option does not appear under ‘Page Attributes’ when I create a page. The only options I get are Template and Order.
I have tried the Quick Edit solution. Here the word ‘parent’ appears but with no drop down box next to it.
It’s difficult to know what to do when the solutions all mention features that are not appearing.

I’m in the middle of an introductory WordPress course and was frustrated when I came across this issue while in the midst of the course. I tried the workarounds noted in previous post(s), but they either didn’t work or were too technical for this non-techy.

However, when I got to the section of the course on the (Appearance) Customizer and specifically on menu customization, I was able to get parent attributes to start appearing in the page editing section. Essentially, I used the menu customizer to create a hierarchy within the navigational menus on the site. Once I did that and returned to page editing, the parent attributes option appeared. That said…It’s important to note that the hierarchy I created in the navigational menus was not (yet) represented in the parent attributes. I still had to set up the hierarchy I wanted in the parent attributes as well…particularly in order to get the URLs to reflect that hierarchy.

Hovering over the page title and then clicking on Quick Edit seems to be working. Select the parent page from the Parent dropdown on the far right and then click Update.

Please note that the page will only order itself correctly in your list of pages when it’s published.

Hi to everyone with this annoying disappearing Page Attributes problem,

I’ll throw in my five cents here.

the best method is the simplest. and that’s what @colter suggested.

I just install the good old Classic Editor and everything is ok.

Since I use Elementor, I don’t need “news” in the Editor.

But for those who need it, I will say that CMS Tree Page View is great. Of course @colter is right that Simple Page Ordering is just as good. A matter of taste ??

Summary of the best workarounds:

1) Classic Editor;
2) CMS Tree Page View;
3) Simple Page Ordering.

and forgot about the problem ??

Although I mostly could not follow the post by dsvistawp (3rd previous post), this person is onto something. If you are missing the Parent setting on both Quick Edit and Page Attributes, try playing around with the order and hierarchy of the menu. It doesn’t seem to matter if you prefer editing the menu from Appearance > Customize > Menus or more directly from Appearance > Menus. Logically, a menu shouldn’t have anything to do with the page parent attribute. However, messing with my menu caused at least a few choices for the parent in Quick Edit. I never could get more than two options to show. But, that was better than none. It was just enough to get mine straightened out for now.

I hope this helps someone. And, I sure hope this problem gets resolved soon. It’s the oldest known problem I’ve ever had to deal with. I guess it’s also a tough one to solve.

colter (@colter) thank you vm! Workaround #1: Publish the Page, then go to Pages and Quick Edit the page and choose the parent.

It’s really bad that we’re still having to use workarounds for this bug after over a year. How long does it take to get this fixed!

I don’t understand why this is not fixed yet. There’s a working patch in this thread.. it’s 3 lines of code.. why can’t this patch be merged into wordpress already?? Its been available since the discovery of this bug…

Still having this issue. A major problem for our site.

I read the problem ticket for this issue. The ticket comments indicates the problem only occurs for sites with over 100 pages. I only have 30. Plus, the problem seemed to be worsening. Not only were all page parent options missing from both Quick Edit and Page Attributes, I now could not add any pages to a menu. All pages were missing in the menu editor. However, all of these problems went away for any pages where I changed the status to “Public”. From Quick Edit, this means unticking the “Private” checkbox.

Try changing your pages and the desired parents to “Public”. See if this fixes it for you.

Although this works around the problem, it still seems to be a problem. “Private” should not mean “hide during page edits”.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by David Burkhart.

Be sure you have at least one post published in the post type you are using. If you don’t have any posts, the parent will also not show (it will not say that you don’t have other posts, but will simply vanish).