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You change the headline, click Update and reload the site, and the old headline is still there. On WordPress this rarely means the save failed. Usually you edited something other than what WordPress serves at the root of your domain.

“Edit the homepage” can mean three different jobs. You might be choosing which page WordPress shows at the root, editing that page’s content, or changing the template that lays it out. Each job happens on a different screen. Our guide to editing pages in WordPress covers the page editor in general. This article covers the homepage, which is where most of the traps are.

Find out what produces your homepage before you edit

You need three answers first, and they take about two minutes to get:

1. Settings > Reading. “Your homepage displays” is set to either Your latest posts or A static page. If it says static, write down which page is selected as the Homepage.
2. The Appearance menu. If it has an Editor item, your theme is a block theme. If it shows Customize and no Editor, your theme is a classic theme.
3. The live homepage, viewed while logged in. If the admin bar shows Edit with Elementor or another builder’s button, a page builder owns the layout.

Those answers tell you where to make the edit:

Your setup	Where to edit
Static page, block editor	Pages > All Pages, then the page named in Reading
Block theme with a Front Page template	Appearance > Editor > Templates > Front Page
Latest posts, block theme	Appearance > Editor, the Home or Index template
Classic theme	Appearance > Customize for the theme’s homepage options. If the theme has a front-page.php file, the layout lives in that file.
Page builder	The builder, opened from the live homepage

One habit prevents most problems. Open the live homepage and click Edit in the admin bar. You get the document WordPress is actually serving, not a duplicate with the same title.

How to choose which page is your homepage

WordPress.org’s guide to creating a static front page gives the steps:

1. Publish the page you want to use. The Homepage dropdown only lists published pages, and our guide to adding pages in WordPress explains why drafts and private pages are left out.
2. Go to Settings > Reading and select A static page.
3. Choose your page in the Homepage dropdown.
4. If you run a blog, you can also choose a Posts page. WordPress will not let the Posts page be the same page as the Homepage.
5. Click Save Changes.

Calling a page “Home” does not make it the homepage. Only this setting does. After you save, WordPress marks the page “Front Page” in your Pages list, which makes it easy to find next time.

Why the page you picked may not be what visitors see

A template can override the Reading setting. WordPress.org’s additional guide to the Site Editor says that in a block theme, a Front Page template takes precedence over the Reading setting. Classic themes have the same rule. The template hierarchy uses front-page.php for the front page whatever Reading says. The name home.php is misleading: it is the posts index, not the homepage.

Here is what that means in practice. Suppose Reading names your page, you edit it, you publish, and nothing changes. Open Appearance > Editor > Templates and look for a Front Page template. A template only shows a page’s own content if it contains a Post Content block. Without that block, your page edits have nowhere to appear. You have two options: add a Post Content block to the template so page edits show up, or edit the template itself.

How to edit a static homepage in the block editor

1. Go to Pages > All Pages and find the entry marked Front Page.
2. Click Edit. Change the text, images and buttons directly in the blocks. If a block is nested inside groups or columns, open List View to select it.
3. Click Save (called Update in older versions) and wait for it to finish before you leave the screen.
4. Open the homepage in a private window. The private window skips your logged-in view and your browser cache.

Colors and fonts that appear across the site belong in the Styles panel, not in each block’s settings. If you style blocks one by one, the next homepage change means redoing that work.

How to edit the homepage in a block theme’s Site Editor

If your site shows latest posts, or the theme ships a Front Page template, the homepage is a template, and it may not appear in your Pages list at all. WordPress’s own contributors acknowledge this. Gutenberg issue #56244 is about making the Home page easier to find in the editor.

1. Go to Appearance > Editor > Templates.
2. Open Front Page. If there is none, open Home, the template for the posts page. If neither exists, open Index, the fallback. Some themes use slightly different names.
3. Edit the blocks and click Save.

Pay attention to what you are editing. A change to the Front Page template only affects the root URL. The header and footer are template parts shared by every page, so editing them inside the homepage template changes them across the whole site. If a template edit goes wrong, the Site Editor keeps revisions and lets you reset a customized template to the theme’s default.

How to edit a classic theme homepage

Classic themes send you to Appearance > Customize. The Homepage Settings panel there mirrors the Reading setting. Many themes add their own panels for homepage sections, such as the hero, featured boxes and widget areas. If the theme has a front-page.php file, some of the layout is written in PHP and no setting will change it. That is a job for a child theme, and our guide to editing themes without losing work explains why you should never edit the parent theme’s files.

How to edit a homepage built with Elementor or another builder

Open the live homepage and click Edit with Elementor in the admin bar, then click Update when you are done. Starting from the live page matters. On one WordPress.org support thread, an Astra starter-template import had created two Home pages and two Elementor Default Kits. The owner kept editing the copy that was not live, and caching turned out not to be the cause. If you think you have duplicates, check which page Settings > Reading names before you delete anything.

Do not open a builder page in the block editor and rewrite it there, because that can break the builder’s layout data. Elementor’s History panel, at the bottom left of the editor, lists recent revisions if you need to step back.

You may see “Sorry, the content area was not found in your page. You must call the_content function in the current template.” Elementor’s help page on that error gives two causes. Either the template has no content area, or you are trying to edit a dynamic page such as an archive or a shop page. Use Theme Builder for dynamic pages. A template that is missing the_content needs a developer or a different theme.

Why your homepage changes are not showing

Check these in order. The cheap, common causes come first:

1. You edited the wrong document. Click Edit from the live page and compare. Confirm the status is Published, not Draft, Pending or Scheduled. Also confirm you are on the live domain and not a staging copy or a translated version.
2. A template controls the layout. See the Front Page and Post Content section above.
3. A cache is serving an old copy. There can be several layers: your browser, a cache plugin, your host’s cache and a CDN. Elementor sites have one more, the CSS files Elementor generates, which its changes-not-appearing guide tells you to clear at Elementor > Tools > Clear Files & Data. Purge each layer once. If a full purge changes nothing, the cache was not the problem, so stop purging and go back to step 1.
4. The editor will not load or save. Plugin conflicts, PHP memory limits and host firewalls cause this. Take a backup first (see what a backup plugin covers), then isolate the cause using our guide to fixing plugins that are not working.
5. It only looks wrong on mobile. Builders store separate settings for mobile. Check at phone width before you decide the desktop edit failed.

Three problems that look like homepage edits but are not

The WooCommerce Shop page. WooCommerce assigns its Shop page separately from your homepage. According to WooCommerce’s Product Catalog documentation, the layout of that page comes from the Product Catalog template in the Site Editor. Content you type into the Shop page may not appear.

Google still shows the old version. Search results are not your website. Google Search Central’s page on asking Google to recrawl says recrawling can take days to weeks. You can request it once with URL Inspection in Search Console. Requesting it repeatedly does not make it faster.

The homepage vanished after a theme switch. WordPress.com’s homepage troubleshooting guide notes that the old homepage can end up in Pages > Drafts. The same check works on any WordPress site: republish the page, then select it again in Settings > Reading.

When to stop and get help

Stop when the fix means editing front-page.php or adding the_content to a template. Stop when the error points to a host limit such as memory or a firewall rule, because only your host can change those. And stop before you delete pages or re-import a starter template to fix duplicates you have not identified yet. Doing that before you know which copy is live usually makes the damage worse.

Whoever helps you will want the same things: the URL, what Settings > Reading says, the theme, the builder, and the exact error text. If you would rather hand the change over, SiteSelf can make homepage and page edits through chat on request and tell you what it changed and checked, though it refuses pages owned by Elementor, Divi or Beaver Builder when the work starts.

Frequently asked questions

Can I edit my homepage by typing directly on the live site?

No. WordPress edits happen in the dashboard: the page editor, the Site Editor or your builder. The Edit link in the admin bar on the live page takes you to the right one.

Why can’t I find my homepage in Pages?

On a block theme that shows latest posts, or one with a Front Page template, the homepage is a template rather than a page. Look under Appearance > Editor > Templates.

How do I put my blog on its own page?

In Settings > Reading, choose A static page, pick your homepage, and pick a different page as the Posts page. Leave that Posts page empty, because WordPress replaces its content with your post list.

How do I change the homepage title that shows in search results?

SEO plugins set it in different places depending on your Reading setting. For a static homepage it is usually set on the page itself. For a latest-posts homepage it is in the plugin’s site-wide settings. Either way, Google shows the new title only after it recrawls the page.

Only my homepage breaks in Elementor. What else can I try?

People report success with a simple workaround: create a new page, copy the content across, and select the new page as the homepage in Reading. This is anecdotal. Afterwards, rename or delete the old copy so you do not create the duplicate-page problem.

Will editing the Front Page template change my other pages?

The template itself only applies to the root URL. The header and footer inside it are shared template parts, so editing those changes every page on the site.

The update button is the easy part. WordPress’s own Updates screen warns that any changes made to theme files will be lost, and that warning covers most of the damage people see afterward: a header gone, a mobile menu that stops opening, a custom template back to the theme author’s version. The site still loads, so nobody notices until a customer does.

This guide covers the dashboard update, the manual route, premium themes, what to check afterward, and how to read the error when an update fails.

Answer three questions before you click update

A theme update is low risk when nobody has edited the theme and the site is simple. It carries more risk when the theme has been customized, when it is a premium theme with a license, or when the site is a store. Three questions tell you which case you are in.

Where do your customizations live? If someone edited style.css, functions.php or a template file inside the parent theme, including through Appearance > Theme File Editor, the update overwrites those edits without warning you. Before you update, move them into a child theme (for PHP and templates), a small site-specific plugin (for code snippets) or Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS (for styling). Setting up a child theme does not move existing edits into it. You have to find each edit, copy it across and test it. Our guide to theme customization that survives updates covers where each kind of change belongs.

Where does this theme get its updates? Free themes from the WordPress.org directory update through the dashboard. Themes bought on the WooCommerce Marketplace update through the WooCommerce.com Update Manager. Other premium themes update through their vendor’s license, which is usually tied to one domain.

Can you get back? Take a backup of the database and the whole wp-content folder. WooCommerce’s update guide gives the same scope for a manual store backup. Then confirm you can actually restore it. A backup you have never restored is a guess.

For a store or a heavily customized site, run the update on a staging copy first. If your host offers one-click staging, use that. Otherwise a staging plugin will do the job.

How to update a theme from the dashboard

You need an administrator login. No hosting access is needed unless WordPress asks for FTP credentials, which is covered in the errors table below.

1. Go to Appearance > Themes. A theme with an update available shows a notice on its card. Click the card, then View details to read the changelog. Look for a major version jump, a new minimum PHP version or a new required plugin.
2. Take and confirm your backup.
3. Click Update now on the theme card. The other route is Dashboard > Updates: tick the theme under Themes, then click Update Themes.
4. Wait until the screen confirms the update is done. Closing the tab while it runs is how sites end up stuck in maintenance mode.
5. Clear every cache layer: your caching plugin, the host’s server cache, and any CDN. Then open the site in a private browser window.

You do not need to deactivate a child theme to update its parent. Leave the child theme active and update the parent.

Theme updates and plugin updates share most of their mechanics: the same Updates screen, the same maintenance file, the same permission failures and rollback tools. If you would rather not run this cycle yourself, SiteSelf handles WordPress plugin and theme updates on request through chat, and anything that touches theme files needs hosting access.

Premium themes follow the vendor’s channel

A premium theme that shows no update usually has a license or connection problem. The theme itself is rarely at fault. For WooCommerce Marketplace themes, WooCommerce’s troubleshooting page lists the usual causes: an expired subscription, the wrong or disconnected WooCommerce.com account, a key assigned to another site, a missing Update Manager, a blocked REST API (load yourdomain.com/wp-json/ and you should see JSON), Plain permalinks, WP-Cron not running, a firewall or security plugin, or restrictive file permissions.

Other vendors bind the license to a domain. After a migration, or on a staging copy, updates can fail with “Download failed. Unauthorized.” until you register the license again for the current URL.

Updating manually with a ZIP

The manual route is fine when the dashboard update is not offered, for example with a premium theme you downloaded from the vendor. Go to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme and upload the ZIP. When WordPress recognizes the theme is already installed, choose Replace current with uploaded.

Three mistakes cause most manual failures. The first is uploading the vendor’s full package (theme plus documentation) instead of the installable theme ZIP, which returns “No valid themes found” or a missing style.css error. The second is extracting the ZIP first. The third is deleting the old theme before you upload, which WooCommerce’s theme update guide warns loses your customizations.

Uploading the theme folder over FTP into /wp-content/themes/ also works. Treat it as a workaround: if the dashboard update failed, the reason it failed is still there.

What a correct result looks like

A finished update shows the new version number on the theme’s card under Appearance > Themes. On the site itself, check the pages that earn money or leads, not just the homepage:

• Header, footer and menus, including the mobile menu at phone width.
• One post, one page, an archive and the 404 page.
• Every form, with a real test submission.
• Your browser console and the PHP error log, for new warnings.

Stores need more. WooCommerce’s update guide lists product pages, cart, checkout, payments, shipping, taxes and emails. Then open WooCommerce > Status > System Status and scroll to Templates. If your theme overrides WooCommerce templates and those copies are now outdated, they are flagged there. Update the override to match the current template, or remove or rename it so WooCommerce falls back to its default.

Some breakage stays invisible. In one project’s GitHub issue, an Avada site came through an update with “nothing visibly broken,” yet its pages grew to about 1.46 MB of raw HTML, up from about 0.3 MB. A quick page-weight or speed check after the update catches this kind of regression.

Should you turn on theme auto-updates?

WordPress lets you enable auto-updates per theme from Appearance > Themes. That makes sense for an unedited theme on a simple site with working backups. It makes less sense for a store, a site with template overrides or a page builder, or any site where a broken checkout costs revenue before anyone notices.

Professionals are split. In MelaPress’s 2025 survey of 264 professionals, 32% of web designers and 33% of web developers used automatic updates. Agencies commonly stage risky updates (page builders, WooCommerce, major versions), batch the low-risk ones and keep a 24 to 48 hour rollback window. Waiting forever carries its own risk: a site several major versions behind is much harder to bring up to date than one that has been updated regularly.

What to do when the update fails

Read the exact message before you retry anything. Each message points to a different cause.

What you see	Likely cause	Fix
“Could not create directory”, or WordPress asks for FTP details	File ownership or permissions on wp-content/themes and wp-content/upgrade, or a full disk	Ask your host to correct ownership and check disk space. Don’t open permissions across the whole site.
“There has been a critical error on this website.”	A PHP, plugin or page-builder conflict with the new version	Use the recovery-mode email link, read wp-content/debug.log, test on a default theme, then deactivate plugins one at a time.
No error, but custom layout or features are gone	Edits in the parent theme were overwritten	Restore the old theme files from backup, move the edits into a child theme, then update again.
“Download failed. Unauthorized.”	License expired or registered to another domain	Renew, or register the license again for this URL.
“Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Please check back in a minute.”	An interrupted update left a .maintenance file behind	Delete .maintenance from the WordPress root (not the theme folder), then run the update again.
“Destination folder already exists” or “No valid themes found”	Wrong ZIP, or the upload collided with the existing folder	Upload the installable ZIP and choose Replace current with uploaded.
Site looks unchanged, or oddly styled	Cache	Purge the plugin, server and CDN caches, then check in a private window.

Deleting .maintenance brings the site back but does not finish the update. Confirm the version number afterward. For a white screen or critical error, our guide to fixing a WordPress white screen walks through the isolation steps.

Stop and get help when the error log names the theme and you cannot tell what changed, when a restore fails, or when checkout is affected on a live store. Stacking more changes on top of a failure you don’t understand makes the cause harder to find.

How to roll back a theme update

Since WordPress 6.3, if a manual theme update fails partway through, WordPress restores the previous version, which it keeps temporarily in wp-content/upgrade-temp-backup/themes/. That covers a broken install. It does nothing when the update installs cleanly and the new version is the problem.

For that case you have two options. WP Rollback reverts any theme from the WordPress.org directory to an earlier version. It does not cover premium themes. For everything else, restore the backup you took before updating. Once the site is back, reproduce the problem on staging and fix the cause before you try the update again.

Frequently asked questions

Will updating my theme delete my posts and pages?

No. Posts, pages and media are stored in the database and uploads folder, not in the theme. The update puts code edits inside the theme’s folder at risk, and it can change how the site looks. Customizer settings are stored separately from theme files.

Do I need to update my child theme when the parent updates?

Not if it only holds small CSS or function tweaks. If it contains copied template files, or code that depends on the parent’s class names, compare those files against the new parent after a major release. The ColorMag threads on wordpress.org show child-theme sites breaking after a major update that changed classes.

Why did I lose customizations even though a child theme was active?

The edits were never moved into the child theme. Creating and activating a child theme does not copy anything across from the parent. Restore the old parent files from backup, find the edits, and move them over by hand.

Should I update core, plugins or the theme first?

People disagree, and there is no official order. What matters more is updating risky items one at a time (the theme’s major releases, page builders, WooCommerce), so a failure points to one cause. Batch the low-risk updates.

How do I stage a store update without losing new orders?

Don’t push the staging database back to live, because orders keep arriving on production while you test. Test the update set on staging, then apply the same updates on production and run your checkout checks there.

A WordPress.org forum poster once described 39 indexed pages, every one green in Yoast, a submitted sitemap and search engines allowed, and still nothing showed up in search. That thread sums up the whole topic. The settings were correct, and correct settings only get your site considered. Being considered and being found are separate problems.

Doing SEO on WordPress means three jobs. Get a handful of technical foundations right. Confirm they took effect on the live site. Then do the ongoing work of publishing useful pages and linking them together. The first two take an afternoon. The third never ends, and it is where the results come from.

What WordPress handles, and what stays your job

Out of the box, WordPress core gives you a search visibility setting, a permalink setting and an automatic XML sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml. An SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO adds control over per-page titles, meta descriptions, canonical URLs and structured data. No plugin has been shown to rank a site better than another, so pick on workflow and price.

What no plugin does is decide whether two pages compete for the same search, whether a page answers the question better than the pages already ranking, or whether anyone can reach it through your menus. Those decisions stay with you. If you are adding pages as you go, the basics of publishing pages Google can find apply to every one of them.

What you need before you start

• Administrator access to wp-admin. Every setting below lives under Settings or in the SEO plugin’s menu.
• A verified Google Search Console property for the live domain. It is the only place Google tells you how it sees your pages.
• A backup before you change permalinks, switch plugins or edit theme files.
• Optional: a terminal or your host’s file manager for the header checks and any theme fixes.

The setup, in the order that matters

1. Make sure the live site can be indexed at all

Go to Settings > Reading and find “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” When it is ticked, WordPress adds a noindex, nofollow robots meta tag to every page. Visitors still see the site normally, which is why the setting survives unnoticed after launch. Untick it and save.

Then check two things the checkbox does not control. First, some hosts noindex staging sites with an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header as well as the WordPress setting. Kinsta’s documentation describes exactly this for its staging environments. If staging configuration was copied to production, the header can remain after you untick the box. Second, look at individual pages. Your SEO plugin can set noindex per page, per post type or for whole archives.

Do not use robots.txt to keep pages out of Google. Google’s noindex documentation is explicit: Google has to crawl a page to see its noindex tag. If robots.txt blocks the URL, Google never reads the tag, and the page can still appear in results.

2. Set permalinks once and redirect if you ever change them

On a new site, go to Settings > Permalinks and choose Post name, so URLs read /pricing/ rather than /?p=123. WooCommerce stores have a separate “Product permalinks” section on the same screen. WooCommerce’s documentation recommends short structures with relevant words, and warns that a custom product base can conflict with a taxonomy base.

On an established site, “switch to Post name” is not automatic advice. Changing the structure changes every existing URL, and old links from Google, email and social posts start returning 404s. If you must change it, map each old URL to its new one with a 301 redirect first. Google treats redirects as a strong signal of which URL you prefer.

3. Install one SEO plugin and use one sitemap

Pick one plugin and deactivate any other plugin that writes titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags or schema. Two plugins doing the same job produce duplicate tags. Yoast’s own help pages warn about Open Graph conflicts for exactly this reason.

Most SEO plugins replace the core sitemap with their own. That is fine, as long as only one exists. In Yoast, the switch is under Yoast SEO > Settings > Site features > XML sitemaps, and content types you set to stay out of search are left out of the sitemap automatically. Yoast also advises deleting any physical sitemap.xml file left in the site root by an old plugin, because it can shadow the real one.

A sitemap helps Google discover URLs. Google’s sitemap documentation says it does not guarantee crawling or indexing. A page that appears only in the sitemap, with no links from your menus or other pages, is still close to invisible.

4. Write a real title and description for each important page

Use the plugin’s fields under the editor, or set templates for whole post types. Each title should say what the page is, specifically: “Emergency plumbing in Leeds, same-day callouts” beats “Home | Services | Company Name.” Avoid template text repeated across dozens of pages.

Set expectations accordingly. Google can rewrite title links, and its snippet documentation says the result text comes mainly from page content and only sometimes from the meta description. Write the description anyway, because it is the version you control, but do not spend hours on it.

5. Pick one version of every URL

The same page can exist at http and https, with and without www, with and without a trailing slash, and with tracking parameters. Choose the preferred form, redirect the others to it, and keep internal links and sitemap entries consistent with it. Your SEO plugin outputs a self-referencing canonical tag on each page by default. Leave that alone unless you have a reason.

Manual canonicals are where this goes wrong. In one WordPress.org support thread, a Yoast post sitemap showed “This XML Sitemap contains 0 URLs.” Cache purges, a Cloudflare purge, disabling plugins and switching themes did nothing. The cause was hand-entered canonical URLs without trailing slashes on a site that used them. Removing them fixed it.

6. Validate structured data, and expect eligibility only

Your SEO plugin, WooCommerce or your theme outputs schema for articles, products and breadcrumbs. Run key pages through Google’s Rich Results Test, then URL Inspection in Search Console. Valid markup makes a page eligible for richer results. It does not guarantee them and it is not a ranking boost.

Theme code causes duplicates as often as plugins do. In a GeneratePress forum case, breadcrumbs loaded twice and Search Console reported “Missing field ‘item’ (in ‘itemListElement’).” The cause was a child theme’s header.php calling wp_head() twice, so every plugin’s head output appeared twice.

7. Measure speed with field data before you change anything

Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds for a good experience are Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. Google uses them in its ranking systems, and its page experience documentation also says good scores do not guarantee top rankings.

WordPress sites are improving here. HTTP Archive’s 2024 Web Almanac found that the share of WordPress mobile sites passing all three metrics rose from 28% in 2023 to 40% in 2024. Check your own field data in Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, find the failing template, and fix the specific cause: usually an oversized hero image, a heavy builder section or unneeded scripts. Adding a third optimization plugin on top of two others makes debugging harder and rarely helps.

8. Connect Search Console and submit the sitemap

Submitting the sitemap in Search Console is optional, and it is worth doing because you then get a report of what Google fetched. Use URL Inspection on your homepage and two or three key pages. It shows whether Google can crawl the page, which canonical Google chose, and whether a noindex was found.

How to confirm the settings actually reached the live site

A plugin’s “Settings saved” message tells you what is in the database. It does not tell you what the site serves. Caching, host rules, security plugins and theme code all sit between the two. Check the output directly, logged out, after clearing your cache:

# Any robots header added by the server or host
curl -sI https://example.com/ | grep -i x-robots-tag

# The robots meta tag and canonical in the served HTML
curl -s https://example.com/ | grep -iE 'name="robots"|rel="canonical"'

# What robots.txt really says
curl -s https://example.com/robots.txt

No terminal? Open the page, choose View Page Source, and search for robots and canonical. Then open /robots.txt and your sitemap URL in a private window.

A correct result: no noindex anywhere on pages you want found, one canonical tag per page pointing at the URL you chose, one title tag, one set of Open Graph tags, a robots.txt that does not disallow those pages, and a sitemap that lists real URLs in the same format as your canonicals. Repeat this after every plugin update, theme change or migration. Updates occasionally change defaults, and nothing on screen tells you when they do.

What to do if Google still is not showing your pages

Read the exact status in Search Console’s Pages report, because each one points somewhere different.

• “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag.” A technical block. Find where the noindex comes from: the Reading setting, a page-level plugin setting, an archive default or a host header. Remove it, then request indexing.
• Sitemap “Couldn’t fetch.” Open the sitemap yourself. Common causes are Plain permalinks (one forum poster fixed a sitemap 404 by switching to Post name), two sitemap sources, a stale physical file, or a security rule blocking Googlebot.
• “Crawled – currently not indexed.” Usually not a setting. Google fetched the page and decided it was not worth indexing yet. Resubmitting the sitemap will not change that. Make the page more distinct and more useful, and link to it from pages Google already values.

If a plugin misbehaves in a way you cannot explain, test for conflicts one plugin at a time on a staging copy. The steps for isolating a plugin that is not working apply here too.

The part that moves rankings: pages worth finding

Google’s guidance on helpful content says its systems favour reliable, people-first content, written from first-hand knowledge. In practice that means one page per real question, answered better than the pages already ranking, with headings a reader can scan.

Practitioners on X and Reddit repeat one method so often it is worth trying, though nobody has controlled data for it. In Search Console’s Performance report, filter for queries where you sit around positions 4 to 20 and sort by impressions. Those pages are already close. Answer the query more fully, fix a weak title, and add internal links from related pages. That usually beats writing another near-duplicate post.

Three smaller habits help. Write alt text that describes informative images, and use alt="" for decorative ones, as the W3C images tutorial recommends, rather than stuffing keywords. Keep tags and categories purposeful, because a tag per post creates hundreds of thin archive pages. And do not noindex every archive by default either, because older posts can lose their only crawl path.

Give it time. Forum replies to owners with correct setups say competitive searches can take months. The r/marketing commenters in the research put it at three to six months before anything shows. Measure impressions and clicks in Search Console, not the plugin’s score.

When to stop and get help

Get a developer or your host involved when a noindex or X-Robots-Tag header persists after you have removed every setting you can find, when duplicate tags come from theme files, when a migration or domain change needs a redirect map, or when a security plugin or firewall is returning 403 errors to the SEO plugin. Those are code, server and hosting problems, not settings. If what you want off your plate is the routine part (titles, descriptions, redirects, plugin settings), SiteSelf handles WordPress SEO changes from chat: it works through its connector plugin for settings and content and needs hosting access for header or theme fixes, then fetches the changed page and reports what it found.

Frequently asked questions

Can I do SEO on WordPress without a plugin?

Partly. The visibility setting, permalinks and the core sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml are free and built in. Per-page titles, meta descriptions and canonical control normally come from a plugin, and the free versions of the major ones cover those basics.

Which SEO plugin is best?

No evidence shows one plugin ranks sites better than another. Choose on interface, the features you actually use and licensing cost across your sites. Whichever you pick, run only one.

Does a green plugin score mean I will rank?

No. The score checks things like keyword placement and length on one page. It knows nothing about competing pages, links or whether your content answers the search better than what already ranks.

Do I need to submit my sitemap to Google?

No, Google can find it through robots.txt and links. Submitting it in Search Console is still worth doing, because you get a report on whether Google could fetch it and how many URLs it read.

Should I change my permalinks to Post name on an old site?

Only if the current structure causes a real problem, and only with 301 redirects from every old URL. Otherwise you trade a cosmetic improvement for broken links and lost signals.

How is WooCommerce SEO different?

Product permalinks have their own settings, product schema comes from WooCommerce or your SEO plugin and needs validating, and near-identical product descriptions compete with each other. Filling in every metadata field is not enough on its own. Distinct product pages and guides that link to them do more.

Most people look up their WordPress version for one of a few reasons. A security release has come out, a plugin says it needs a newer WordPress, a scanner report has flagged the site, or someone has inherited a site and nobody knows what’s on it. Checking takes seconds when you can log in. The trouble starts when you can’t log in, or when two tools give you two different numbers.

This guide goes through each method, from the official screen to the command line, and explains which results you can trust. The WordPress version is only one number. Before an update you’ll usually want the plugin versions too, and our guide to listing plugins with wp plugin list covers those.

Where the dashboard shows your WordPress version

Site Health is the most reliable screen. WordPress.org’s documentation says its Info tab lists the version your site is currently using. Site Health was added in WordPress 5.2, so any site you’re likely to run today has it.

1. Log in to wp-admin as an administrator.
2. Go to Tools → Site Health and click the Info tab.
3. Expand the WordPress section and read the Version line.

The same tab has a Server section, which shows your PHP version. Keep the two separate: the PHP version is the one people most often report by mistake. WordPress.org’s Site Health screen documentation lists every section on the Info tab.

Three other screens show the version too:

• At a Glance on the Dashboard home screen. This widget can be hidden under Screen Options, so if you don’t see it, it may just be switched off.
• Dashboard → Updates, which also tells you whether a newer release is available.
• The admin footer, bottom right, on most admin screens.

If one of these is missing, try another. Plugins and custom admin themes sometimes hide the footer or remove widgets. That doesn’t mean something is wrong.

How to check without logging in to WordPress

If it’s your own site, you don’t need wp-admin. You need access to the files or to the server. Three methods work.

Read wp-includes/version.php

WordPress keeps its version in a file. Open your hosting file manager or connect over SFTP, find the folder that holds wp-config.php, wp-admin and wp-includes, and open wp-includes/version.php. Look for this line:

$wp_version = '7.1.2';

Only read the file. Don’t edit it or save it. The usual mistake here is opening the wrong installation. Hosting accounts often hold a staging copy, an old copy in a folder like /old/, or several sites next to each other. Check the folder path against the domain before you trust the number. Staging copies often drift from production, so don’t assume they match.

Run wp core version over SSH

If you have SSH access and WP-CLI, one command gives you the answer:

cd /var/www/example.com/public
wp core version

Or point the command at the site from anywhere on the server:

wp core version --path=/var/www/example.com/public

The WordPress Developer Blog points out that wp core version is not the same command as wp cli version. The second one reports the version of WP-CLI itself, and people mix them up all the time. If you see Error: This does not seem to be a WordPress install. Pass --path=`path/to/wordpress` or run `wp core download`., you’re in the wrong directory. Move into the site folder or pass --path.

According to the wp core version command reference, the command runs before WordPress loads. That means a plugin with a fatal error usually won’t stop it from answering.

Look in your host’s dashboard

Many hosts show the WordPress version in their control panel, often on a site overview or updates screen. Make sure you’re signed in to the right account and looking at the right site or environment. Treat the number as a convenience, not proof. WordPress.com says it may run one version behind while it tests a new release. WP Engine’s support docs tell you to refresh the portal’s Updates section if the version shown might be out of date. If the host’s number doesn’t match Site Health or WP-CLI, go with Site Health or WP-CLI.

WooCommerce stores: the Status report

If you run a store, WooCommerce → Status shows the WordPress version under WordPress environment. WooCommerce’s guide to updating PHP and WordPress mentions Site Health as another option. The same report also shows the WooCommerce version and the PHP version, so read the WordPress row. This report is also what support forums usually ask for, so it’s worth knowing where it is.

Which number is actually the WordPress version

A WordPress site has at least five version numbers, and a status report may show all of them together:

Number	What it is	Where you see it
WordPress core	The release you’re running, such as 7.1.2	Site Health → Info → WordPress, version.php
PHP	The server language version	Site Health → Info → Server
WooCommerce	The store plugin’s own release	Plugins screen, WooCommerce → Status
Database revision	An internal schema number, not a release	version.php, WP-CLI
?ver= on CSS and JS files	A cache-busting string, often a theme or plugin version	Page source

If a plugin’s requirements, a PHP upgrade or a support ticket depends on the core version, take it from the WordPress row and nowhere else.

Can you tell another site’s version from outside?

Sometimes. From outside you only have clues, and they’re often missing. There are two to try, in this order:

1. Page source. View the source of the homepage and search for generator. An unmodified site outputs <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 7.1.2" />.
2. The RSS feed. Open /feed/ and look for <generator>https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.2</generator>.

Many sites hide both. In September 2026, SmartWP scanned 1,203 WordPress sites. It found 40.7% showed the version in the generator tag, 21.1% showed it only in the RSS feed, and 38.2% showed it in neither place (SmartWP’s version study). SmartWP also offers a version-checking tool, so treat the study as a useful snapshot, not a census. Still, the lesson holds: check the feed after the page source, because many sites that hide the tag still expose the feed.

Two other clues often come up, and both are weak. readme.html no longer shows the version number in current WordPress, and many sites block it with a 403 or remove it entirely. ?ver= strings on stylesheets often belong to a theme or plugin, not to WordPress.

If nothing turns up, you’ve learned nothing. Security plugins and some themes remove these clues on purpose. A hidden version doesn’t mean the site isn’t WordPress, and it doesn’t point to any particular version. If you need the real number, you need access to the site.

What to do when your checks disagree

Almost nobody gets stuck on how to check. People get stuck when the answers don’t match. A scanner reports an old version on a site you updated last week. The host panel shows one release and Site Health shows another. Or a plugin complains that WordPress is too old when you know it isn’t.

First, confirm the version with a method that reads the installation itself: Site Health, version.php or wp core version. Then look into why the other tool disagrees. A scanner may be reading a cached page, a CDN copy or a stale clue. A host panel may need a refresh. Don’t swap files around or re-run updates because a scanner told you to.

Sometimes the version is right and something else is wrong. In one resolved WordPress.org support thread, a store owner saw plugin requirements in red, as if WordPress were out of date, and core updates weren’t showing up. The WooCommerce Status report confirmed WordPress was current. The real cause was a conflict with another plugin, found by isolating plugins one at a time. That process is explained in our guide to fixing plugins that are not working.

If the check itself fails, the problem is bigger. A missing or broken version.php, or a site that returns a 500 error after an update, points to a failed core update. Restore from a backup, or reinstall the same version from a fresh download. Our guide to the WordPress white screen covers recovering a site that won’t load.

What to do once you have the number

Compare it with WordPress.org’s release archive. As of September 22, 2026, the archive listed 7.1.2, a security release, as the latest. It also said only the most recent release in the 7.1 series is safe to use and actively maintained. Don’t rely on a version number printed in an article, including this one. Check the archive on the day you check your site.

If you’re behind, updating is a separate job. WordPress.org’s Updating WordPress guide covers it. In short:

• Take a backup you know you can restore, and try the update on staging if the site matters.
• Update from Dashboard → Updates.
• If WordPress asks for FTP details, the server’s file ownership isn’t set up for direct updates. Use the correct credentials or ask your host to fix the ownership. Don’t loosen permissions across the whole site.
• If a “briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” notice won’t go away after a failed update, delete the .maintenance file in the site root. That clears the notice but doesn’t finish the update.
• If you update by hand, never delete the existing wp-content folder. It holds your themes, plugins and uploads.
• Check the version again afterwards. Don’t assume an auto-update ran just because it’s switched on.

Agencies and freelancers taking on a client site usually record the core, PHP, plugin and theme versions at intake, with the date. That way the next mismatch has a baseline to compare against.

If you’d rather hand over the check and the updates that follow, SiteSelf handles WordPress core and plugin updates on request through chat. It tells you what’s about to change before it starts, records what it did, and reports what it checked afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a plugin to see my WordPress version?

No. Site Health is built into every WordPress release since 5.2, and the admin footer and At a Glance widget need no setup either. Version-display plugins exist, but installing one just to read a number adds code you then have to keep updated.

Should I hide my WordPress version from the public?

Many security guides recommend removing the generator tag and the version in the feed, and plenty of security plugins do this. The tradeoff is that some client scanners and audits expect to read the version publicly. Stripping ?ver= from every stylesheet can also break cache-busting, so visitors keep seeing old CSS after an update.

Why does my scanner show an older version than WordPress does?

External scanners read public clues, which can come from a cached page, a CDN copy or a stale file. Confirm the version with Site Health or wp core version. If those show the current release, the scanner is wrong, and you can send it the confirmed number along with how you checked.

Is the version in the dashboard the same on every site in a Multisite network?

Yes. A Multisite network runs one copy of WordPress core, so every site in it is on the same version. Check it once from the network admin or with WP-CLI in the installation folder.

My WordPress version is current but a plugin says it is too old. What now?

Clear any caching first, then check whether another plugin is interfering with update or version data. Deactivating plugins one at a time on staging usually finds the one causing it. Reinstalling WordPress rarely helps, because core was never the problem.

Most WordPress themes ship a 404 page that says something like “Oops! That page can’t be found.” and not much else. Replacing it takes minutes once you know which part of your site controls it. Most failed attempts go wrong because they edit the wrong part.

“Customize 404 page” covers two jobs. One is design: what a visitor sees when a URL doesn’t exist. The other is status: what the server tells browsers and Google. This guide covers both, because a polished 404 page that sends the wrong status code is worse than the stock one.

Which method fits your site?

First, work out what kind of theme you run. Open Appearance in the dashboard. If you see Editor, you have a block theme. If you see Customize, Widgets or Menus, you have a classic theme. When a tutorial’s menu path doesn’t match your dashboard, it was usually written for the other kind of theme.

Your setup	Where the 404 lives	Code needed
Block theme	Appearance > Editor > Templates > 404	No
Classic theme	404.php in a child theme	Some PHP
Elementor Pro	Templates > Theme Builder > Error 404	No
Any setup	A plugin that assigns an ordinary Page	No

One approach doesn’t work at all: publishing a normal Page titled “404”. WordPress gives it a URL like /404/ and does nothing else with it. It only becomes the error page if a plugin or a template tells WordPress to use it. If you’re not sure which template files your theme actually uses, our guide to editing themes without losing work shows how to find out.

How to edit the 404 template in a block theme

Block themes keep the 404 page as a template you edit with blocks. You don’t need a plugin or any code.

1. Go to Appearance > Editor > Templates.
2. Open the 404 template. Recent versions list it as “Page: 404”. If your theme doesn’t include one, use Add New Template and pick the 404 option.
3. Replace the heading and message. Add a Search block and links to your homepage and your main sections. Keep the header and footer template parts so visitors can tell they’re still on your site.
4. Save, then open a URL that doesn’t exist on your site to see the result.

One detail catches developers out. Once you save a template in the Site Editor, WordPress uses that saved version instead of the theme’s file. According to the Theme Handbook, a saved template takes priority, so editing the theme’s 404.html afterwards changes nothing on screen. To go back to the file, reset the template from the Templates list. Learn WordPress has a short lesson on personalizing your 404 template if you want a walkthrough.

How to customize 404.php in a classic theme

Classic themes use a PHP file. WordPress’s template hierarchy looks for 404.php and falls back to index.php if it doesn’t exist. Don’t edit the parent theme’s copy, because the next theme update overwrites it. Put your version in a child theme. Our guide to theme customization that survives updates covers setting one up.

1. Create or activate a child theme.
2. Copy the parent’s 404.php into the child theme folder, or create a new one. You need SFTP or your host’s file manager.
3. Edit the content between the header and footer calls.
4. Upload the file and test with a nonexistent URL.

A minimal version looks like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<main id="primary" class="site-main">
  <h1>Page not found</h1>
  <p>This page has moved or never existed. Search the site or start from one of these pages.</p>
  <?php get_search_form(); ?>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ); ?>">Home page</a></li>
    <li><a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url( '/services/' ) ); ?>">Our services</a></li>
  </ul>
</main>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Some themes keep the visible text somewhere else. In one wordpress.org support thread, the Hestia theme’s 404.php only called a theme action, and the site owner couldn’t find where “Oops!” was coming from. If your 404.php contains no text, check the theme’s options panel. You can also replace the file entirely in your child theme. If you’d rather describe the page than build it, SiteSelf handles design changes to your WordPress site like this one. It needs hosting access for a 404.php edit, and it doesn’t edit templates owned by Elementor, Divi or Beaver Builder.

How to use an ordinary page as your 404

A plugin lets you design the 404 as a regular Page in the block editor, without touching theme files. Smart Custom 404 Error Page, maintained by NerdPress, is the most widely installed option. Its WordPress.org listing shows more than 100,000 active installs.

1. Create and publish a Page with your 404 content.
2. Go to Appearance > 404 Error Page, select that Page and save.

Its listing notes three things. It doesn’t work with the “Plain” permalink structure. It sends a proper 404 status and creates no redirects. And by default, visiting the assigned Page directly returns a 404 too, so test with a made-up URL, not the Page’s own address. The changelog records a security fix in version 11.4.8 in October 2024, after NerdPress took over the plugin. Check “Last updated” and “Tested up to” before you install it.

Not every “404 plugin” does the same job. Some redirect missing URLs somewhere else instead of showing a page with a 404 status. Read what the plugin does before choosing it.

How to build a 404 page in Elementor

Elementor’s documented route is Templates > Theme Builder > Error 404. Elementor’s help center says this needs Elementor Pro. Design the template, publish it, and set its display condition to 404 pages. A draft template, or one without that condition, never appears. The official route doesn’t exist in free Elementor. The plugin method above works with any setup.

What should a good 404 page include?

Google’s Search Central guidance recommends a clear, friendly message, your site’s usual look and navigation, and links to popular content or the homepage. It also suggests a way to report the broken link. Practitioners add a search box near the message and ask you to keep the page light.

• Say what happened in plain words. “We couldn’t find that page” beats a joke the visitor has to decode.
• Put search near the top. The visitor came looking for something specific.
• Link to where people actually go. A publisher links recent articles, a service business links its services and contact page, and a store links search, categories and a few featured products.
• Keep it accessible. The usual WCAG 2.2 rules apply: a descriptive page title (2.4.2), clear headings (2.4.6), link text that makes sense (2.4.4) and a labeled search field (3.3.2).

How to test it, and why the status code matters most

Open a URL that can’t exist, such as yoursite.com/this-page-does-not-exist-123. Don’t test with the assigned Page. Check that your design shows up, then check the status code. In a terminal, run:

curl -I https://yoursite.com/this-page-does-not-exist-123

The first line should say 404. You can also open your browser’s developer tools, go to the Network tab and reload the page. If it says 200, you have a problem. Google defines a page that says “not found” but returns 200 as a soft 404, and it flags blank or nearly blank pages the same way. Google’s guidance is plain: a custom 404 page should still return HTTP 404.

Why isn’t my custom 404 page showing?

These causes are ranked roughly by how often they come up in WordPress docs and support threads. Start at the top.

1. Stale rewrite rules. Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes without changing anything. That rebuilds the rules, and it’s the first fix WordPress’s common-errors handbook gives. If it doesn’t help on Apache, check .htaccess and mod_rewrite, or ask your host. Nginx doesn’t use .htaccess at all. Our guide to adding pages and getting them seen covers this reset in more detail.
2. The wrong part was edited. A Page called “404” was published but never assigned. A saved Site Editor template is overriding the file. An Elementor template is still a draft. The plugin has no Page selected, or permalinks are set to Plain.
3. Cache or CDN. Purge your caching plugin, your host’s cache and your CDN, then test in a private window. If you use Cloudflare and nothing else works, pause it, resave permalinks, then unpause.
4. A theme or plugin conflict. In one support thread, a Sensei email template replaced the 404 template. Switch to a default theme, then deactivate plugins one at a time, preferably on staging. The steps for isolating a plugin conflict apply here too.
5. The server answers before WordPress runs. If you see your host’s branded error page instead of anything from your theme, the request never reached WordPress. Nginx try_files and Apache ErrorDocument rules live on the server. Nothing you change in the dashboard fixes them, so ask your host.

Should you redirect missing URLs instead?

Only when there is a real replacement. Google’s guidance is to return 404 when content is gone, 410 when it was removed on purpose and won’t come back, and 301 when it moved to a clear replacement. A discontinued product can point to its successor or its category. An old article can point to the updated version.

Redirecting every missing URL to the homepage is the mistake practitioners warn about most. Google may treat those redirects as soft 404s, and visitors land somewhere that has nothing to do with what they clicked. Avoid redirect chains and timed “meta refresh” redirects too. For URLs you never replaced, a helpful 404 page is the honest answer.

WooCommerce stores need two extra checks. WooCommerce’s permalink docs say the product base must not clash with the category or tag bases. Old product URLs return 404 after a permalink change unless you redirect them.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a plugin to customize my 404 page?

No. The Site Editor on a block theme or 404.php in a child theme does the job without one. A plugin is worth it if you want to design the page as an ordinary Page and never touch theme files. If you go that way, check that the plugin is still maintained.

Will my 404.php changes survive a theme update?

Only if the file is in a child theme. Theme updates overwrite edits to the parent theme’s files. Site Editor changes are stored in the database, so theme updates don’t replace them.

Can I make a custom 404 page with free Elementor?

Not through Theme Builder, which requires Elementor Pro. A plugin that assigns an ordinary Page as the 404 works with any theme or builder. You can also write a 404.php in a child theme.

What should I do with hundreds of broken URLs after a migration?

Export the list from Search Console or a crawler and match each old URL to its new one where one exists. Bulk-import 301s for those. Let everything without a real replacement return 404 or 410. A custom 404 page makes the leftovers less painful for visitors, but it doesn’t remove them.

Why does visiting my assigned 404 page show an error?

That’s the default behavior of Smart Custom 404 Error Page. The plugin has a setting to turn it off. Either way, test with a URL that doesn’t exist on your site.

Almost nobody gets stuck on the part where you create the page. They get stuck after pressing Publish, when the page doesn’t show up in the menu, has no header, or returns a 404. Those are four separate systems: the page itself, the navigation, the template and the URL rules. Each one needs its own step, and fixing one doesn’t fix the others.

This guide covers both jobs: creating the page, then making it reachable and getting it to display correctly. To change a page that already exists, see how to edit pages in WordPress.

What do you need before you add a page?

You need an account that can publish pages. Administrators and Editors can. If you log in and there is no Pages item in the left-hand admin menu, your role doesn’t include page permissions, and an administrator has to change it.

Next, find out which kind of theme you have, because the menu steps depend on it. Open the Appearance menu in the dashboard. If it has an Editor item, you’re on a block theme and navigation lives in the Site Editor. If it has Menus and Customize, you’re on a classic theme. Many tutorials were written for classic themes. Readers on block themes follow them, can’t find Appearance > Menus, and conclude WordPress is broken. It isn’t. The setting has moved.

Finally, check that you actually want a page. WordPress.org’s documentation puts it this way: pages are for non-chronological content, such as About, Contact, Services and legal notices. Posts are dated entries that show up in the blog and its feed. If the content will still be true next year and visitors will look for it in the navigation, make it a page.

How do you create and publish a page?

This is the standard workflow in the block editor, and it works the same on classic and block themes:

1. In the dashboard, go to Pages > Add New Page. Some versions and hosts label the button Add New. The admin bar’s + New > Page opens the same screen.
2. Type the title. WordPress builds the slug from it, so “Our Services” becomes /our-services/.
3. Add the content as blocks: a Heading block for each section, Paragraph blocks for the text, and Image, Buttons or Columns blocks where they help. Text pasted from Word or Google Docs often brings stray spacing and fonts with it. Paste it as plain text, or type into the blocks directly.
4. Open the settings sidebar (the panel icon at the top right) and set everything in the next section before you publish.
5. Click Save draft, then Preview in a new tab. Check the page at desktop width and on a phone.
6. Click Publish, then confirm by clicking Publish again.

Which sidebar settings should you set before publishing?

Five settings in the Page tab decide how the page behaves once it’s live:

• Status and visibility. Published pages are public. Drafts, Pending Review, Private and password-protected pages are hidden from visitors. They are also left out of menus and the homepage selector.
• Slug. Settle it now. If you change it after other pages, emails or ads link to it, those links break unless you add a redirect.
• Parent. Choosing a parent makes this page a subpage and puts the parent in the URL, so a Board page under About becomes /about/board/. It doesn’t put the page into any menu.
• Template. This controls the layout around your content. Leave it on Default unless you know you want something else. The template section below explains why.
• Order. A number (1, 2, 3) that sorts pages in automatic page lists and in some themes’ default menus.

Can you create pages from the Site Editor instead?

Yes, on a block theme. WordPress.org’s Site Editor documentation describes Appearance > Editor > Pages, where the plus icon creates a draft. The benefit is that you edit the page inside its real template rather than on a blank canvas. The risk is that the header, footer and title belong to the template, not the page. WordPress locks those blocks and shows “Edit your template to edit this block.” If you unlock and change them, the change applies to every page that uses the template.

How do you get the new page into the menu?

You add it yourself. The menu doesn’t pick up new pages, and this is the most common “my page is missing” report on the WordPress.org forums and Reddit.

On a classic theme

1. Go to Appearance > Menus.
2. Pick the right menu from the “Select a menu to edit” dropdown. Sites often have several, and editing the wrong one is a common mistake.
3. In the Pages box, tick your page and click Add to Menu.
4. Drag it into position. To create a dropdown, drag it slightly right, under its parent item.
5. Under Menu Settings, check that the menu is assigned to a location your theme actually shows, usually Primary or Header.
6. Click Save Menu. Nothing changes on the live site until you do.

The same screen has an “Automatically add new top-level pages to this menu” checkbox. It only covers top-level pages and only works with classic menus, and it adds every new page, including ones you didn’t mean to show. Most sites are better off adding pages by hand.

On a block theme

Go to Appearance > Editor, open Navigation (or open the header template and select the Navigation block), click the plus icon and add a Page Link to your page. Then save. One Reddit user described getting there by trial and error: “I had to access the template editor, edit the navigation element, and then I could add, reorder, and delete page links.” The Site Editor shows each menu item as a block, and you drag Page Links into one another to build a submenu. For more complex dropdowns, see our guide to building a WordPress drop down list.

One trap applies to both theme types. In a resolved WordPress.org thread, a site owner deleted their pages and recreated them under the same names, and the menu stayed empty. Deleting a page removes its menu item. A new page with the same title is a different page, so you have to add it to the menu again.

How do you make the new page the homepage?

Go to Settings > Reading, choose “A static page”, pick your page under Homepage and save. If you also want a blog, create an empty page called Blog, choose it as the Posts page, and WordPress will list your posts there. Only published pages appear in these dropdowns. If yours is missing, it’s probably still a draft.

Why does the new page have no header or look different?

The page has the wrong template. Many themes include a Landing, Blank or Canvas template that deliberately removes the header, footer and menu, which suits a campaign page and nothing else. In a WordPress.org support thread, a site owner getting ready for a promotion published a new page and found it had no menu. The page was using a Landing template, and switching it to Default fixed the problem. Check the Template field in the sidebar before you change anything else.

If the template is right and the page still looks wrong, the problem is probably in the template itself: its width, spacing, sidebar or header. This is where adding a page turns into design work, and a change made there affects every page that uses the same template. If you’d rather hand that work off, SiteSelf’s page on design changes to an existing site describes the agent editing the styles and templates on your live site from a request you write in chat. If you want to do it yourself, theme customization that survives updates covers which layer to edit.

How do you add a page with Elementor or another builder?

Create the WordPress page first, then open it in the builder. With Elementor, that means Pages > Add New Page and then the “Edit with Elementor” button. Builders are common. HTTP Archive’s 2025 Web Almanac found that about 60% of WordPress sites use some form of page builder. Builders often have their own template and header settings, so the WordPress Template field may have no effect on what visitors see. If the builder won’t load or save, the problem is in the builder, not in page creation. Creating the page again usually just leaves you with duplicates.

What about WooCommerce Cart and Checkout pages?

They are ordinary WordPress pages, but WooCommerce ignores them until they’re assigned. A page called Cart does nothing until WooCommerce knows it’s the cart page. WooCommerce’s pages documentation sets out the process:

• If the pages are missing, recreate them from WooCommerce > Status > Tools with the create-pages tool.
• If you build one by hand, put the Cart or Checkout block on it, or put the shortcode ([woocommerce_cart], [woocommerce_checkout], [woocommerce_my_account]) in a Shortcode block. Pasted into a Paragraph block, the shortcode may not run.
• Assign each one under WooCommerce > Settings > Advanced > Page setup, and assign the Shop page under Settings > Products.
• Use a separate page for each function. WooCommerce warns that sharing one page causes incorrect redirects and broken payment gateways, and version 3.7 and later don’t let you do it.

Themes don’t come with these pages. The theme’s demo content can make it look as if they exist, which is what confused one store owner on r/woocommerce until they ran the Status tool and assigned the pages.

What does a correct result look like?

Open a private or incognito window, where you’re logged out, and check four things. The page loads at its URL. It appears in the menu on desktop and inside the collapsed mobile menu. It has the same header and footer as the rest of the site. Its links, buttons and forms work. Checking while logged in as an administrator doesn’t count, because you can see drafts and private pages that visitors can’t.

What if it still doesn’t work?

Work through the layers in this order. It goes from the cheapest check to the most invasive:

1. Status. Open Pages > All Pages. If the page shows “Draft”, “Private” or “Password protected” next to its title, visitors can’t see it.
2. The URL returns 404. Check the slug for typos and look for a post, category or plugin page with the same slug. Then go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes without changing anything, which rebuilds the rewrite rules. Don’t switch to a different permalink structure on a live site. That breaks every existing URL.
3. Old version showing. Clear your caching plugin, your host’s cache, any CDN such as Cloudflare, and your browser. Only blame the cache after you’ve ruled out status and menus.
4. “Publishing failed. The response is not a valid JSON response.” The editor saves through the REST API, and this error means that request failed. Copy your content somewhere safe first. Then resave permalinks and deactivate plugins one at a time. In one WordPress.org case on Google Cloud, the fix was a server setting: Apache’s AllowOverride None had to become AllowOverride All.
5. “Publishing failed. You are probably offline.” Practitioners usually trace this to an HTTP and HTTPS mismatch, where the WordPress Address and Site Address settings don’t match the SSL setup at the host or CDN.

Stop and get help once a fix means changing server configuration, .htaccess or wp-config.php, or when you’ve switched to a default theme with all plugins off and the error is still there. At that point the problem is in hosting, not in WordPress. Host support can often fix a server-level error quickly. If your checkout is failing, don’t wait: get help straight away.

Frequently asked questions

How do I make a page appear as a dropdown under another page?

Set the parent in the page’s sidebar so the URL is right, then nest the menu item under the parent in Appearance > Menus or in the Navigation block. The parent setting and the menu are separate, so you have to do both. Setting a parent never puts a page into a menu.

Can I add a page straight from the Navigation block?

Yes. In the block Navigation editor you can type a name that doesn’t exist yet and create the page there. It still has to be published before it shows up. It’s easy to end up with a blank published page this way, so add the content before you leave.

How do I duplicate an existing page?

WordPress core has no Duplicate link in the page list. You can open the page, use the editor’s options menu to copy all blocks, and paste them into a new page. A duplicator plugin does the same in one step. Either way, give the copy its own slug and title.

Why can’t I find my new page in Google?

Publishing doesn’t tell search engines anything. They find pages by crawling, which takes time and speeds up when the page is linked from your menu, footer or other pages. Also check that your SEO plugin hasn’t set the page to noindex.

Should a developer create pages in theme files?

No. Page content belongs in the database, created in wp-admin or with WP-CLI’s wp post create --post_type=page. Theme files hold templates, which are the layout that wraps the content, not the content itself.

Can I add several pages at once?

The dashboard creates one page at a time. WP-CLI, importers and some builders can create them in bulk. Bulk-created pages that are nearly identical give visitors nothing new and tend to do poorly in search, so only make pages that each have their own purpose.