Changing permalink name redirects to another template?

Question

I'm creating a template with a few templates with names page-contact.php, page-portfolio.php and page-blog.php.

The problem is that when I select a Defaul Template for a page (I expect it to open page.php) and rename the page permalink to sitename.com/contact the page starts using the page-contact.php..

Why is that, why is the URL telling WordPress what template to use if a Default one i chosen? Is this intended behavior?

Answer 1

Yes, this is the intended behaviour:

page-{slug}.php - If the page slug is recent-news, WordPress will look to use page-recent-news.php

So, simply use a different filename for your templates, like template-contact.php for example. You can find more info about this here:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy