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  • Custom Page Templates Not Showing Up in Wordpress

    By Danno

    So today I’m chippin’ away at a redesign for my rusted art website.  Like most sites I develop, I rolled it out on Wordpress. I seemed to have run a into a bug though, and I’m not sure if this a localized me thing, or a legit gremlin.

    The problem

    I uploaded a custom page template to my FTP and and wasn’t not showing up in the Wordpress admin.  So I double and triple checked to make sure my Template tags were all cool, and they were. Normally, a drop down that lets me choose which page template I want to use will show up, but for some reason: no dice.

    The fix

    What seemed to fix the problem was the following:

    • Activate a different theme (I just activated the default)
    • Reactivate your desired theme
    • Go to Manage > Pages
    • And you should now see the Page Template
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    About the author

    Danno started freelancing in 1996. He is the co-founder and (ex) President of Graphics.net, owner of FeedIcons.com, EliteFreelancing.com, FastCharacters.com and SteelAndSnow.com. He digs wind, waves, guitars and circles. Follow Danno on Twitter.

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    Comments on this article...

    • Drew Strojny:

      Weird.

      This same exact thing happened to me the other day. Drove me nuts for about 20 minutes. I ended up stumbling on that fix too. Sounds like it might be a bug, although I am not sure how to replicate it.

    • Danno:

      Yeah, I hear you Drew. It seems that activating a different theme and reactivating your desired theme is the Wordpress equivalent of a soft reboot. I’ve used this theme reboot technique to fix a few odd issues and now is one of the first things I do when trouble shooting Wordpress weirdness.

    • Wes Fierce:

      Hey thanks for the tip, I just now noticed this on my new site. It didnt effect my other site though :P

    • Luis Pastrulo:

      The same thing happened to me last week. However you can check some other examples at http://www.7strategy.com.

    • TR:

      Excellent! It worked for me too. Thanks

    • Amir:

      Зря не используете FeedBurner

    • joban:

      Hi

      I have an issue with the page templates..

      I have 4 menu links in the home page. these pages are loading differently styles pages. So I have created pages in word press admin with same page slugs. They are about, products, contacts, services. I also created the same 4 php files in my new themes named about.php, products.php, contacts.php and services.php

      but when I load the pages the its shows only the page templates in the page.php

      I am really stuck on this

      Any help appreciated ..

      Thanks in advance..

    • gawexersHaw:

      Админчег :) У меня к тебе небольшое предложение, хоть и не по теме блога ;) Напиши пожалуйста свой обзор передачи Гордон Кихот. Особенно прошлый выпуск, про Шансон.

      Спасибо :) Удачи дружище

    • Прошу-Внимания:

      http://www.elitefreelancing.com, админ. Кто писал про последнее китайское предупреждение ? Извини. Я надеюсь мы найдем компромисс ? 1. Поставь на блог-комментирование хорошую каптчу. 2. Пошли урлы своих блогов сюда chezanah@gmail.com и ты избавишься от меня. Ещё раз приношу извинения. издержки производства…

    • Danno:

      Go to #worpress on freenode irc and ask there.

    • TJMapes:

      THANK YOU GOD!!! THIS HELPED ME SO MUCH… sorry for the caps im just super stoked

    • Eric:

      yeah it's just happened to me too, Ive got a duplicate template that I can switch to and back from so that hopefully no visitors notice the changes. Thanks for the tip (I've also been unable to recreate the problem, I have been uploading new versions of the custom page template from time to time and I think it could have something to do with that)

    • Israel Meneses:

      That fixed!!

      Thanks a lot

    • Annie:

      this helped me as well. Thanks for this tip!

    • Danno:

      :-)

    • Santana:

      Hi. Good site.

    • Greg_G:

      ommmmmgggggg I love you.

    • Danno:

      Popular little post this one.

    • Ian:

      Worked for me too – many thanks

    • Damien:

      This post is a lifesaver. It's so weird that this is still an issue in WordPress 2.7. They should have caught and fixed it by now.

    • dayn:

      Thanks for this post. Got here by searching "custom templates not showing wordpress"

    • joe:

      friggin' sweet!

    • Danno:

      Still works I see :-)

    • Jake Holman:

      Simply reactivating your theme will work fine.

    • Ryan:

      thanks for posting….i always appreciate the first result from google working!

    • Danno:

      You're most welcome.

    • Kyle:

      This worked great THANKS!

    • carlnunes:

      Aaahhh Haaa!

      I'm working in the wrong theme!

      Thank you for sharing!

    • Kristof:

      Damn that explains it. I am just previewing a Theme with the plugin "user-theme" and I was going nuts because my freakin Template isn't showing up.
      You just saved me hours of trying to fix it, thanks a lot!

    • darkmatter:

      Much appreciated. Your post saved a lot time for fixing a really odd problem.

    • Antonio:

      Finally a solution, thanks!

    • Paolo Gabrielli:

      Many thanks! Your hint just saved me!

      Thanks again,
      P.

    • Ben:

      Thanks! I thought there was something wrong with my template.

    • robotronik:

      Oh, thank you so much.

      I was so confused– "That dropdown was here yesterday!?"

      Your fix worked for me. You're a life saver.

    • Danno:

      You're all welcome x 10.

    • Rick Winkler:

      Thanks for the help! I thought I had screwed something up. I guess it wasn't me, this time…

    • MangoBaboon:

      Worked for us to on a custom wordpress theme design. Great post!

    • free food samples:

      it's the same thing like a computer. Sometimes rebooting is all you need.

    • andrew:

      thanks for this was searching for 1 hour!

    • SAM:

      Just switched to 2.8.2 and the page templates do not work…. I select the appropriate template from the drop down men and when I click save it bounces me back to the default page template. Really frustrating…

    • Словарь Юриста:

      списки кандидатов, выдвигаемые партиями политическими и избирательными объединениями (блоками) для выборах в представительные органы, проводимые сообразно пропорциональной избирательной системе.

    • Alastair:

      Fixed, cheers.

    • chodorowicz:

      In my case this solution didnt work. In my case It turned out to be a problem with the style.css encoding – it was Latin-1 intstead of UTF-8

    • T.C.:

      Thanks a ton. I was about to pull my hair out. This is STILL a prob in 2.8

    • Benjamin Charity:

      Thanks for this post! I was going crazy!

    • Terri:

      Wow thanks that really helped!!!

    • Simon:

      Thanks, the best tip I got in days :)

    • Achton:

      Works for me too.. still not fixed in latest SVN, apparently.

    • kirk:

      Thanks man, this helped me out instantly :)

      kirk

    • Sam:

      I was pulling my hair out man! This worked a treat, Thank you from Australia

    • Matt:

      Thanks buddy!

    • Jay August:

      Thanks! :)

    • Alberto:

      oh , thanks, it worked, i am goint to try it in another bugs in wordpress maybe i can fix them this way

    • Faggot90:

      This is no bragging really. ,

    • Joseph:

      Helpful post! I think this is related to moving from one Theme with page templates into another with page templates…but I haven't tested it thoroughly

    • James:

      Sweet thanks! Same thing happened to me I'm using version 2.8.4 this is still an issue haven't been fixed.

    • Henri:

      Yep. That worked.. Thanks

    • Stephanie:

      Thank you sooooooo much. I was just about to pull my hair out over this!

    • Paul:

      Worked! Wow… I gone mad when I noticed that I can not apply custom template anymore! I spent 3 days going crazy! Thanks for this post! Solved the mistery ;) Good job ;) However this should not happen !

    • Josh:

      I was following along in a tutorial two weeks ago, working with WP for the first time. You can imagine my frustration when the little "page template" drop down wasn't there when it was for the instructor! I must have messed around with it for about 2 hours trying to get it to appear. I must have come across your fix by accident, but I didn't realize what it was that fixed it. This morning however, it happened again. THANKS for posting this! You saved me another 2 hours of fussing around trying to stumble across the fix this morning.

    • Rebecca:

      Can I just say thank you! You totally saved me from punching and kicking the wall. Thank you. Did I mention thanks yet? What a weird solution.

    • Claudio:

      Great! You made my day! Thanks, cheers!

    • April:

      Helped me thanks!!

    • stardust:

      the same thing is happening to me right now and i cannot even log into wordpress. how can i resolve it?

      my site log in is http://www.theentrepreneurbusiness.com/wp-login.php

      thanks in advance!

    • Vladimir2:

      аквариум

    • Jonas:

      This was driving me crazy, I thought it was plugin related at first… Thank you for the fix!


      chillze.com

    Comments on this article...