Beginners to WordPress frequently get the terms “posts” and “pages” mixed up. WordPress comes with two content types by default: posts and pages. We’ll go through the differences between Posts vs Pages in WordPress in this article.
If you’re new to WordPress, you’re undoubtedly wondering what the difference is between posts and pages. Both in the WordPress dashboard and on the website, appear to be the same.
Readers frequently inquire, “Why do I need both?” When should I utilize posts and when should I avoid them? When should I use pages and when should I avoid them?
What are WordPress Posts?
The material of a blog is organized into posts, which are listed in reverse chronological order (newest content on top). On your blog page, you’ll see a list of postings.
If you’re running a blog with WordPress, you’ll find that articles make up the majority of your website’s content.
The ‘Posts’ menu in your dashboard allows you to create and update WordPress posts. The Add New Post screen looks like this.
Your posts are designed to be timely because they are in reverse chronological order. Posts from the past are archived by month and year.
As the posts get older, the user will have to search a little more to find them. You can categorize and tag your posts to make them easier to find.
WordPress posts are disseminated through RSS feeds since they are published with a time and date in mind. This allows your readers to be notified via RSS feeds when a new post is published.
Bloggers can utilize RSS feeds to send email newsletters using services such as Constant Contact, Aweber, and MailChimp. Your audience can subscribe to a daily and weekly newsletter that you generate.
The fact that posts are made in real-time makes it a particular social platform. To allow your users to share your posts on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, you can utilize one of the many social sharing plugins available.
The conversation is sparked by posts. They have an integrated comment option that allows users to leave feedback on a certain topic. Comments, pingbacks, and trackbacks are all enabled by default.
If you want, you can disable comments on previous posts by going to Settings » Discussion.
The author’s name and the date the post was written or updated are frequently included in WordPress posts.
This article, which you are currently reading, maybe the best example of a WordPress post. Above the article title, you can see the post category ‘Beginner’s Guide’ at the top. The last updated date, author’s name, and social share buttons are all listed beneath the title.
The comments section follows the main article material. These aren’t frequently found on a page.
Let’s take a look at pages and how they differ now that you know what they are.
In WordPress, what are Pages?
Pages are static “one-time” material like your about page, privacy policy, contact page, and so forth. Pages are timeless entities, and the WordPress database retains the published date of the page.
Your about page, for example, is not supposed to expire. Sure, you can go back and make changes, but there’s a good chance you won’t have about page 2012, about page 2013, and so on. Pages aren’t included in your RSS feeds by default because they don’t have a time and date associated with them.
The ‘Pages’ menu in your WordPress dashboard allows you to create and edit pages. The Add New Page screen looks like this:
In most situations, pages aren’t designed to be social, hence they don’t have social sharing buttons. In most circumstances, you don’t want anyone to tweet your privacy policy page, for example.
Pages, meanwhile, do not include comments. On your contact page or your legal disclaimers page, you don’t want users to leave comments. Although you can allow comments for your WordPress pages, it is disabled by default.
Pages, unlike posts, are hierarchical in structure. Within a page, for example, you can have subpages or child pages. When modifying a page, you may quickly turn it into a subpage by selecting a parent page from Page Attributes.
WordPress has a feature that lets you use your theme to build custom page templates by default. This allows developers to change the appearance of each page as needed.
Posts and pages in most themes have the same appearance. The custom page templates function comes in handy whether you’re creating a landing page or a gallery page with your page.
Pages also offer an antiquated function called ‘Order,’ which allows you to change the order of pages by setting a numerical value. Plugins like Simple Page Ordering, on the other hand, extend this feature by allowing you to drag and drop the order of pages.
Pages vs. Posts in WordPress (Key Differences)
To conclude, the key differences between posts and pages in WordPress are as follows.
- Posts are current, whereas pages are eternal.
- Pages are not social, whereas posts are.
- Rather than using tags and categories to arrange posts, we use categories and tags. Pages are organized in hierarchical order and can be divided into child and parent pages.
- Pages are not included in the RSS feed, however, posts are.
- Pages do not have an author or a published date, whereas posts do.
There may be exceptions to the above differences. Plugins can be used to extend the functionality of both types of content.
Despite their differences, pages and posts in WordPress have certain parallels.
First and foremost, they are both used to publish content. Text, photos, forms, and other elements can be added to both posts and pages. Both pages and posts include a featured image meta-field.
Most Commonly Asked Questions
The following are some of the most common queries we’ve received from users about posts vs. pages and how to use them appropriately in WordPress.
1. How many posts and/or pages am I allowed to create?
You are free to create as many posts and/or pages as you like. The number of posts or pages that can be produced is unlimited.
2. Is there any SEO benefit to using one over the other?
Search engines prefer well-organized material. Timeless content is regarded as more essential; nonetheless, the most recent timely content receives a lot of attention.
In summary, there may be a distinction, but as a beginning, you need not be concerned. Concentrate on making your website user-friendly. See our entire WordPress SEO tutorial for beginners for more information.
3. Which pages on my website or blog should I create?
It is entirely dependent on the type of blog or website you are creating.
4. Is it possible to convert posts to pages and vice versa?
Many beginners make the mistake of adding content to posts when they intended to create pages. In the same way, some new bloggers may save blog entries as pages.
If you’re just getting started, the post-type switcher plugin is a simple way to address this.
We hope that this article clarified the differences between pages and posts in WordPress and demonstrated how to use them.
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