How to tangle a hierarchy on purpose

March 11, 2010 9:06 PM

In Wordpress is there any way to make the same page appear in the page structure more than once (i.e., be the child of more than one page at the same time) or should I just duplicate the contents, create extra pages and make a note to update them all consistently?
posted by zadcat to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I'm not absolutely certain there isn't an easier way, but my first thought was to make a special category for this page and then create a template that spat out that category only. (I use wordpress a lot but mostly out of the box.)

But if a client needed this functionality by tomorrow AM I would:

* Enter the page content as a private post
* Create a new page template based on the typical "single.php" included with the default theme, or your theme, and hard-code the post id into the query, and the usual post nav and meta info stripped out to disguise its non-page origins.
* Assign that template to the pages you create as placeholders in your page tree. The actual page content would be left blank, except the title, which would be used by the nav generator, of course.

That is probably a really inelegant way of doing it, but it does keep your from having to update multiple pages. Hopefully someone more expert at WP will chime in.
posted by maxwelton at 4:02 AM on March 12, 2010

Best answer: The "Page Links To" plugin will do what you want.

Create the page with your content as you normally would.

Next create your various child pages, but instead of entering content you will enter the URL of the page you have already created in the new "Page Links To" box on the edit screen.
posted by davey_darling at 5:33 AM on March 12, 2010

Response by poster: I have a feeling that plugin does automatically what maxwelton described in detail above. I will check it out. Many thanks.
posted by zadcat at 9:50 AM on March 12, 2010