Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Anthony c
20,907 PointsDoes WordPress Know to Look for Page.php automatically?
I didn't notice that we initialized or signaled to wp that page.php would be our page template. Is core set up to look for a page.php from the get go?
2 Answers
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsWordpress uses this logic to decide which template to display. I used the graph about mid way down the page a lot.
https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/basics/template-hierarchy/
James Gill
Courses Plus Student 34,936 PointsAnthony,
In short--yes, but WP looks for a page template by using a hierarchy (the diagram Kevin Korte linked to). If you read that diagram left-to-right, starting with "Singular Page", you'll see that WP looks for several templates. page.php is the default, fall-back template if no other templates exist; and if page.php doesn't exist, WP always falls back to index.php.
That diagram is well worth getting to know--it's key to understanding template usage.
Anthony c
20,907 PointsAnthony c
20,907 PointsThanks for the additional reading, kevin.
So in this very basic case, yes wordpress is automatically looking for page.php without us telling it?
Kevin Korte
28,149 PointsKevin Korte
28,149 PointsIt is, but it is one of the very last page templates it resorts to using.