Is there a way to use THE LOOP in WordPress to load pages instead of posts?
I would like to be able to query a set of child pages, and then use THE LOOP function calls on it – things like the_permalink() and the_title().
Is there a way to do this? I didn’t see anything in query_posts() documentation.
Yes, that’s possible. You can create a new WP_Query object. Do something like this:
query_posts(array('showposts' => <number_of_pages_to_show>, 'post_parent' => <ID of the parent page>, 'post_type' => 'page'));
while (have_posts()) { the_post();
/* Do whatever you want to do for every page... */
}
wp_reset_query(); // Restore global post data
Addition: There are a lot of other parameters that can be used with query_posts. Some, but unfortunately not all, are listed here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts. At least post_parent and more important post_type are not listed there. I dug through the sources of ./wp-include/query.php to find out about these.
Answer：
Given the age of this question I wanted to provide an updated answer for anyone who stumbles upon it.
I would suggest avoiding query_posts. Here’s the alternative I prefer:
$child_pages = new WP_Query( array(
'post_type' => 'page', // set the post type to page
'posts_per_page' => 10, // number of posts (pages) to show
'post_parent' => <ID of the parent page>, // enter the post ID of the parent page
'no_found_rows' => true, // no pagination necessary so improve efficiency of loop
) );
if ( $child_pages->have_posts() ) : while ( $child_pages->have_posts() ) : $child_pages->the_post();
// Do whatever you want to do for every page. the_title(), the_permalink(), etc...
endwhile; endif;
wp_reset_postdata();
Another alternative would be to use the pre_get_posts filter however this only applies in this case if you need to modify the primary loop. The above example is better when used as a secondary loop.
Further reading: http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query
