Well, WP 2.3 released yesterday and we have successfully upgraded our blog.

Subpages not on Index page of Wordpress blogs. 

Background:

I am using wordpress in multiple of my websites. Though wordpress is a “blogging” software, you can easily create static pages and give it a look like a complete “html” sites. If you have only few pages, you should not have any problem and you can use any available wordpress themes. But, if you have numerous pages and sub pages under them, you are in trouble. The question is “Why are you in trouble?”!!

 Trouble with multiple pages and sub pages for a wordpress blog:

Two major problem using wordpress pagination!

1. By Default in most of the themes all the pages and subpages are lited in the index page. Usually all the subpages are treated as pages and there is no wat to tell which one os the main page and which one a subpage.

2. If you have numerous pages, by default it will display all of them making the site menu awfully long!

Solution:

Option 1. Use a theme that has in built subpages command. So that in the index page only the top level pages are displayed and when you click on a top level page, subpages under this appear. But there is only only ONE wordpress theme that has this neat feature. (if you know any other theme with similar feature, please let us know). The theme is: WP-ANDREAS 1.7 which you can view or download. I use this theme in one my website: http//calcuttaglobalchat.net/calcuttablog.

Option 2:. The default code is:

 <?php wp_list_pages(‘arguments’); ?> 

These are the default options for the function (from wordpress.org)

By default, the usage shows:

• All Pages and sub-pages are displayed (no depth restriction)
• Date created is not displayed
• Is not restricted to the child_of any Page
• No pages are excluded
• The title of the pages listed is “Pages”
• Results are echoed (displayed)
• Is not restricted to any specific author
• Sorted by Page Order then Page Title.
• Sorted in ascending order (not shown in defaults above)
• Pages displayed in a hierarchical indented fashion (not shown in defaults above)
• Includes all Pages (not shown in defaults above)
• Not restricted to Pages with specific meta key/meta value (not shown in defaults above)

Now, if you use this whereever you wish to display subpages, it will work fine:
 <?php wp_list_subpages(‘arguments’); ?>
If you have two column, one will still display all the pages and another colum will show the subpages under it.

depth (integer): from wordpress.org

This parameter controls how many levels in the hierarchy of pages are to be included in the list generated by wp_list_pages. The default value is 0 (display all pages, including all sub-pages).

• 0 - Pages and sub-pages displayed in hierarchical (indented) form (Default).
• -1 - Pages in sub-pages displayed in flat (no indent) form.
• 1 - Show only top level Pages
• 2 - Value of 2 (or greater) specifies the depth (or level) to descend in displaying Pages.

So change this  <?php wp_list_pages(); ?>
to <?php wp_list_pages(’title_li&depth=1=<h2>Pages</h2>’ ); ?>

basically you are asking to display only the top level pages.

Option 3: Use WIDGETS!!

a) WenderHost Subpage Widget: A widget for displaying a list of subpage links. The list remains consistent regardless of where you are in the hierarchy.
Download
Simply install the plugin and put it in your sidebar, Subpages will apper if the Top level page has any subpages in it.

b) Subpages Plugin: The Sidebar Widget Plugin is easy to integrate and maintainable content provider for your page, but one aspect was missing from my side. The pages widget displays all pages, but I liked only to display the pages which are children from the current root page. For this reason I wrote the SubPages widget for the Sidebar Widget.

Download

c) Transmenu: Creates a nice looking animated drop down menu for listing your pages and subpages (and more in the future):

Download

d) Subpage listing: Subpage Listing allows you to take full advantage of WordPress Pages’ hierarchy by generating a navigational tree of the pages below them (subpages).

Download

e)SPS-Suite: SPS-Suite is the successor of “SPS -Sidebar Page Switcher”. It enhances your page-list and your archive-list in the sidebar as well as your search function. This plugin is useful for blogs with many static subpages and the wish of a small sidebar. There are several options implemented in the plugin: 1. You can have the sidebar-page-list be more smart, e.g. only pages of the top level and all useful level are displayed, additionally you can hide pages from being displayed in the sidebar. 2. You can extend your search function with a fulltext index, this search uses articles and pages and is restricted to MySQL 4.0 or higher. 3. Addionally to the sidebar function this plugins allows you to display a navigation bar, which can help your users to maneuver through many sub- and subsubpages. 4. Last not least this plugin shortens your archive list to a maximum of month displaying also all years.

Download

Just try these plugins and I see whichone suits your site the best,
Hope this post has been useful to you.