Custom Page Templates Not Showing Up in Wordpress

By Danno

On October 9th, 2008
in Wordpress.

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

More...

About the author

Danno started remote freelancing in 1996 and worked as little as possible in order to snowboard as much as possible. He is the co-founder and (ex) President of Graphics.net, owner of FeedIcons.com, EliteFreelancing.com, FastCharacters.com and SteelAndSnow.com. His favorite shape is a circle.

Tags: hacks, tips, Wordpress

Drew Strojny:
October 9th, 2008

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:
October 9th, 2008

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:
October 10th, 2008

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

Luis Pastrulo:
October 13th, 2008

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

TR:
October 14th, 2008

Excellent! It worked for me too. Thanks

joban:
October 29th, 2008

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..

Amir:
October 29th, 2008

Зря не используете FeedBurner

gawexersHaw:
October 30th, 2008

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

Danno:
November 2nd, 2008

Go to #worpress on freenode irc and ask there.

Прошу-Внимания:
November 2nd, 2008

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…

TJMapes:
November 27th, 2008

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

Eric:
December 2nd, 2008

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)

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