Page Hierarchy

Every world has structure. Thornwall Keep belongs to a region. Captain Vex reports to the Iron Accord. Chapter three happens before chapter four. Page hierarchy gives you a way to reflect that structure directly in your workspace — not just as a mental model, but as actual nested relationships you can navigate.

Links vs Hierarchy

Hierarchy is about containment and organization — “this page lives inside that one.” Wiki-links are about connection — “this page references that one.” A character page for Magistrate Thorne can be nested under a “Characters” folder and linked from the Thornwall Keep location page. The two are complementary, not competing.

Create a child page

You can nest any page under any other page.

Sidebar button

Right-click a page in the sidebar and select New Subpage. Type the title and press Enter.

Hover action

Hover over a page in the sidebar to reveal an inline + button. Click it to create a child directly beneath it.

The parent page gains a disclosure arrow. Click the arrow to expand or collapse the subtree. Child pages appear indented one level beneath their parent.

Nest multiple levels deep

Hierarchy can go as deep as you need. A continent can contain regions, which contain cities, which contain districts, which contain specific locations. The sidebar renders all levels when expanded.

To create a grandchild page, right-click any existing child page and select New Subpage. Inklings supports five or more levels of nesting without issues.

Move pages

Pages are not locked in place. You can reorganize your hierarchy at any time by moving pages.

Drag and drop

Drag a page in the sidebar and drop it onto its new parent. The page moves along with all its children.

Context menu

Right-click the page and select Move to…. Choose the destination from the picker, or select Root to promote the page to the top level.

When you move a page, its entire subtree moves with it. If “Lira the Cartographer” has three sub-pages of map notes and you move Lira under a different faction folder, all three map notes come along.

Move a page to root level

To promote a nested page back to the top level, right-click it and select Move to… → Root. The page becomes a root-level entry in the sidebar, no longer nested under anything.

Cycle prevention

Inklings prevents you from creating circular hierarchies. You cannot move a page to become a child of itself, and you cannot move a parent page under one of its own descendants. If you attempt either, the move is rejected with a feedback message.

Caution

Deleting a parent page can also delete all its children. The delete confirmation dialog shows how many descendants will be affected. You can undo the entire deletion from Trash.

How deletion works

When you delete a page that has children, a confirmation dialog appears showing the descendant count. You can choose to:

• Delete all — moves the parent and all descendants to Trash
• Delete only this page — moves only the parent to Trash; children remain active (they may appear at root level as orphans)

Deleted pages go to Trash, not the void. See Trash and Recovery for how to restore them.

See Also

• Trash and Recovery — Restore deleted pages and their ancestor chains
• Sidebar Navigation — Navigate the page tree efficiently
• Container Rules — Auto-assign types to pages created inside folders
• How Pages Connect — The mental model behind hierarchy and links