---
title: "Reorder pages"
date: 2026-10-22
author: "Matt Cromwell"
featured_image: "https://rootsandfruit.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/rf-featured-reorder-all-the-things-2400x1260-1.png"
---

# Reorder pages

Pages already know about menu order. A lot of themes list them that way in a page menu, so a drag on this screen often shows up without a custom query. The new part is nesting. You can change a page’s parent by dragging it under another page, and that save is immediate too.

## Open Reorder under Pages

1. Go to **Pages → Reorder**
2. Top-level pages are the rows you see first
3. A page with children has an arrow. Click it to expand or collapse that branch

Same rule as posts: published pages only, no Save button, drag the handle.

## Change order and parent

1. Drag up or down to change the order among siblings
2. Drag to the right, under another page, to make it a child of that page
3. Drag left to bring it back up a level

I check the result in **Pages → All Pages**. WordPress shows the parent there, and the Order column matches the position you dragged. On the front, a menu you built by hand in Appearance → Menus does not follow this. That menu has its own order. A list that uses `wp_list_pages()`, or a theme that sorts pages by menu order, will follow the drag.

## Limits worth knowing now

- The screen loads up to 100 child pages under one parent. Past that, the extras are not in the tree
- A site with 1,000 or more published pages shows a warning. You can still drag, and I would not. See [Reorder a long list](https://rootsandfruit.com/docs/reorder-posts/reorder-a-long-list/)
- Drafts stay off this screen until you publish them

Custom post types that are hierarchical, like a course outline, use this same nesting. [Reorder a custom post type](https://rootsandfruit.com/docs/reorder-posts/reorder-a-custom-post-type/) is how you turn that screen on.