Twenty Twenty-Four Header Not Showing: Replace Template, One-Page Hiding and Other Ways It Goes Missing

Which pages lost it, and since when

Twenty Twenty-Four's support forum has a thread with a familiar title: hiding the header and menu on certain pages. The answer, separate templates, is right. The route people take to get there is where headers get lost. So before fixing anything, establish the scope and the date, and ask who was last in the Site Editor.

• Every page lost its header, but blog posts kept theirs: the Pages template was edited.
• A single landing page has no header: it uses its own template, by design or by accident.
• The blog home or archive changed shape and its header looks different: someone used Replace Template.
• Everything looks like a fresh install: a child theme or another theme was activated.
• Phones show no header, laptops do: a visibility rule on the block.

The general missing header guide covers builders and classic themes. This one sticks to how Twenty Twenty-Four is assembled.

Eleven templates, one header part

The theme ships eleven templates: 404, archive, home, index, search, single, page, and the custom ones named Page with Sidebar, Page with Wide Image, Page No Title and Single with Sidebar. Each one opens with a Template Part block for the header and closes with one for the footer. There is a single header part, parts/header.html, holding the Site Logo, the Site Title and a Navigation block on a Base-colored band.

Page No Title is the one that misleads people. It removes the page's title, not the site header. Owners pick it hoping for a bare landing page and find the header still sitting there.

Five ways the header leaves, with a test for each

Deleted from Pages to clean up one page

The owner opens a landing page, clicks Edit template, deletes the header and saves. That template is Pages, used by every page without a custom template. Test: in Appearance, Editor, Templates, open Pages and look at List View. If the first item is not Header, this is your cause.

A custom template born from a landing pattern

Twenty Twenty-Four's page patterns, About, Business home, Newsletter landing, RSVP landing and the portfolio pages among them, are flagged for use in templates, not only in pages. None includes the header. A template started from one has none. Test: edit the page, note which template the Summary panel names, then inspect that template's List View.

Replace Template over a customized header

Some owners detach the header inside Blog Home to tweak it for the blog alone. When someone later switches Blog Home to the Writer or Portfolio layout, the detached copy is discarded and the shared header returns. To the owner, their header disappeared. Test: compare the header on the blog with the header on a page. If they match and the blog version used to differ, this is it.

Hidden instead of deleted

Two newer features can do the same job silently. Hide, added in WordPress 6.9, drops a block from the rendered page. Viewport rules, added in 7.0, keep the markup and conceal it on chosen screen sizes. Test: List View shows an icon beside hidden blocks.

A child theme or theme switch

Templates and parts edited in the Site Editor belong to the theme that was active when they were saved. A forum report on this theme describes activating a child theme and losing every modified template and part. The header usually returns in its stock form, without the changes you made, which many owners read as their header being gone. Test: check Appearance, Themes for a recent change.

Hiding the header on one page, the way the theme expects

Here is the method that leaves every other page alone. It takes about five minutes, and the only real risk is forgetting what you named the template.

1. 1

   Create the template in the Site Editor

   Go to Appearance, Editor, Templates and click Add Template, then choose Custom Template. Give it a plain name, No header (landing) for instance, and click Create. WordPress opens it pre-populated with content.

2. 2

   Remove the header from this template only

   Open List View and delete whatever forms the header: the Header template part if it is there, or any site title and menu blocks sitting above the content. Keep the Content block. Remove the footer too if you want a true landing page.

3. 3

   Save the template

   Save, then look at the template list. Pages should still show as unchanged; only your new template is customized.

4. 4

   Assign it to the one page

   Edit the landing page. Under Summary in the page settings, click the template name and pick No header (landing) from the list. Update the page.

5. 5

   Check a neighbor

   Open a different page in a private window. Its header should be untouched. If it is not, the edit landed on Pages; reset that template.

Reuse the same template for every future landing page, instead of making a new one each time. One headerless template is easy to remember. Six are how sites end up with the problem this page exists to solve.

Restoring a header that went missing

• Template edited by mistake: in the Templates screen, the three dots beside the template offer Reset. It returns to the theme's file version, header included, and only that template's layout edits are lost.
• Template worth keeping: add a Template Part block as the first item, press Choose, pick Header, and under Advanced make its HTML element header.
• Custom part gone missing: point the orphaned Template Part block at a header part that still exists, or swap it for a fresh block.
• Hidden block: pick it in List View and unhide it from the toolbar.
• Child theme reset: switch back to the parent to recover the stored templates, then carry them over properly with a tool made for that job, such as WordPress.org's Create Block Theme plugin.

Back up the database first; templates live there. Did the header go the morning after an update? Then rolling back a broken theme update comes first. After that, purge the page cache and check a page, a post and the home page logged out. Once the header is back, a misbehaving phone menu is a separate job: Twenty Twenty-Four mobile menu not working. If whole layouts reverted with the header, Twenty Twenty-Four layout broken explains the child theme mechanism in more depth.

Rules that keep the top of the page stable

• Use Replace Template before customizing Blog Home, Index, Archive or Search, not after.
• Edit the shared header through Edit original, so changes apply everywhere, rather than detaching copies per template.
• Never edit Pages or Single to solve a problem on one page.
• Keep one dated note of every template you created and the pages assigned to it.
• Before any theme change, write the Site Editor changes out to theme files.

Every Twenty Twenty-Four template opens with the header. The trouble starts when someone edits the wrong one.

The Twenty Twenty-Four review explains the Business, Writer and Portfolio layouts in full, while the Twenty Twenty-Four speed guide argues that speed code belongs in a small plugin rather than a child theme, for the same storage reason as above.

Flexible for the owner, fragile for the business

Twenty Twenty-Four's design is honest: one header, used everywhere, edited in one place. The fragility comes from WordPress allowing live template edits by every administrator, with no review and no test, and from storing those changes against one theme. For a writer's site, fine. For a business whose header carries the phone number and the booking button, a missing header is lost calls, and it can go unnoticed for weeks.

With Next.js, the header is a layout component; dropping it from a page is a code change, reviewed and tested before release. It costs more to build and needs a developer for layout changes. The Twenty Twenty-Four and Next.js comparison sets out that trade, and the Twenty Twenty-Four migration plan shows what a move involves. The WordPress troubleshooting section has fixes for other themes and problems. Our theme troubleshooting team can restore the templates, the theme repair service handles broader damage, and hosting and maintenance plans keep a watch on them afterwards.