Beginner's Guide to WordPress Template Hierarchy (Cheat Sheet)

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Following our infographic on how WordPress works behind the scenes, several users asked us to describe how a WordPress theme works behind the scenes.

In this article, we'll explain the hierarchy of WordPress templates for beginners. This cheat sheet will be extremely useful when customizing a template or creating your own WordPress theme .

WordPress template hierarchy explained for beginners

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Why learn about WordPress template hierarchy?
All modern WordPress themes consist of templates, stylesheets, Javascript, and images. Together, these files control how your website looks to users.

Related: 9 Things to Look for When Choosing the Perfect WordPress Theme for Your Website .

WordPress has a default template hierarchy. This means that templates with certain file names affect certain areas on your site. It also tells you which template name to use for a specific element.

Most modern WordPress themes come with templates for displaying categories, date, archives, single posts, custom pages and more. As a user, you can create more templates by creating a child theme .