Skip to main content
School of Medicine IT

Unpublish or Delete Pages

Sometimes you may want to remove a page from your site. WordPress provides options to either unpublish (hide but keep for later) or delete (remove from the site).

Unpublishing a Page

Unpublishing removes a page from your live site but keeps the content in WordPress for future use. Even though this example talks about pages, this same technique works on other types of content like news posts, events, directory profiles, etc.

Change Status to Draft

  1. In the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > All Pages.
  2. Hover over the page you wish to unpublish and click Edit.
  3. In the Publish box (on the right side):
    • Locate and edit the Status setting.
    • Change it from Published to Draft.
  4. Click Update.
  5. The page will no longer be visible on your site but can be republished later.

Screenshot of the Publish options with the Status setting highlighted.

Deleting A Page

Deleting removes a page from your site. Deleted pages first go into the Trash folder, where they can either be restored or permanently deleted.

Before Deleting A Page

  • Ensure there are no links to the page. Otherwise, any links to a deleted page will lead to a “Page Not Found” error.
  • Deleting a parent page does not delete any children pages assigned under it. Child pages should either be reassigned to a new parent or deleted to avoid orphaned pages.

Avoid Orphaned Pages

Our sites use a page hierarchy where some pages are assigned as the parent and others are children. Deleting a parent page without reassigning or deleting its children can leave behind orphaned pages that confuse visitors and disrupt your site’s structure.

  • Deleting a parent page does not delete its children. Child pages remain in WordPress but lose their logical placement in the hierarchy.
    • Example: If “About Us” is a parent page and you delete it, children like “Our Mission” and “Our Team” will no longer have a parent, leaving them disconnected from the site’s structure.
  • Even if there aren’t any links to orphaned pages, they can still appear in site searches or search engine results.
  • Best practices:
    • When applicable, reassign child pages to a new parent before deleting.
    • Delete the lowest-level pages first, then work up to the parent.

Delete a Single Page

  1. In the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > All Pages.
  2. Hover over the page title.
  3. Click Trash.
  4. The page will be moved to the Trash folder but not permanently deleted yet.

Delete Multiple Pages

  1. In the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > All Pages.
  2. Check the box next to each page you wish to delete.
  3. At the top or bottom of the page list, open the Bulk Actions dropdown menu.
  4. Select Move to Trash.
  5. Click Apply.
  6. All selected pages will be moved to the Trash folder at once.

Screenshot showing a list of pages in which several are selected in preparation for deletion.

Restore a Page from Trash

  1. Go to Pages > Trash.
    Screenshot highlighting the link to the Trash when viewing All Pages.
  2. Hover over the page you wish to restore.
  3. Click Restore.
  4. The page can now be found under Pages > All Pages and will be in Draft mode.

Permanently Delete a Page

  1. In the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > Trash.
  2. Hover over the page you wish to permanently delete.
  3. Click Delete Permanently.
  4. Warning: This action cannot be undone.