WordPress Page Vs Post: What To Use & What’s The Difference?

If you’re new to WordPress, you may not know the difference between a Page vs Post.  It’s not a hard concept to learn and from what I show you here, I hope you will see the difference quite easily.

There are several elements to consider when comparing Pages and Posts:

• Blogroll
• RSS Feed
• Time
• Type of Content
• Formats
• Engagement
• Sorting
• Navigation Menu
• Organization
• Final Thoughts

 

 

BLOGROLL

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A Blogroll is a Page that collects and shows all your Posts in chronological order with most recent at the top.  When you first create a website and install WordPress, you will see when you click “Pages” in the left menu, you’ll have a default Page named Blog.

Whenever you create Posts, you’ll see it in your Blogroll using this URL http://yourdomain.com/blog for example.

Most blogs like mine, workanywherenow.com, you will see that I’ve set my homepage to my Blogroll which lists all of the Posts that I have ever written.

Pages, on the other hand, will never show up in a Blogroll.

You don’t have to use the Blogroll as your homepage, you can actually set it to any other Page instead.  You set your “Front Page” by going to:

• Settings menu
• Reading submenu
• Choose “Your Latest Posts” if you want to use your Blogroll as your home page
• Or, choose a Page that you’ve created instead.

To summarize, Pages do not show on the Blogroll, only Posts do.

 

 

RSS FEED

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When people subscribe to your blog, they will get an syndication feed of your blog posts, this is called a RSS feed.  Because this is only for your Blogroll, only Posts will show up on your RSS feed and Pages will not.

Therefore, keep in mind, what information you want your subscribers to be sent and this way you can determine whether you want to use a Page or a Post.

 

 

TIME

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This is another big difference between Pages vs Posts.  Pages are timeless in that the published date and time do not show up on them.

Posts on the other hand show your published date and time, unless you do extra CSS coding to get rid of them, but by default they are time sensitive.

This is another reason why Pages are known as static and Posts are considered dynamic.

 

 

TYPE OF CONTENT

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You may now wonder what kind of content you would put on a Page vs a Post.

PAGES:

For Pages, you would use it for things like:

• About Me
• Contact
• FAQ
• Policies
• Marketing Type
• Evergreen Info

Pages are more like information about your website and for marketing type info that can be promotional in nature.  Many lead and capture pages are built using Pages, for instance.

Pages can also be used for any evergreen type of info about the topic or products on your website.

 

POSTS:

Posts on your blogroll are used for:

• educating,
• notifying,
• training,
• entertaining,
• showing,
• recommending,
• and sharing to your audience.

Posts are used to write your main content with, all the things you want to write about the niche of your site.  These could be how-to posts, ‘best of’ posts, lists of things, and so much more.

I have 13 types of posts you can write on your blog right now!

As you can see, Posts speak directly to your audience, and Pages are more informational basis.  However, you can use them however you want once you know all at the differences between them.

 

 

 

FORMATS

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Posts are created with one format, which you can add text, images, and videos into.  Nothing really special about the Post format, whatever you can do in a Post, you can do in a Page, but not necessarily the other way around.

Pages, on the other hand, can be created like Posts but they also can be created by using templates your theme offers.

Like mine offers these template options which are usually shown on the right on the Page edit screen:

 

For me, creating a Contact Form is very easy, I just have to pick Contact Form template, name my page “Contact Me“, click on “Publish“, and add it to my menu.

No need to add anything else to the main edit box, which will remain blank but when I go to my contact me page, the form will be there.

In my theme settings, I already set up the email where the messages goes when someone this form to contact me.

What templates will be available for you will depend on your theme so if you like lots of templates, select a theme that will offer that kind of variety.

 

 

ENGAGEMENT

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How people engage on your blog is by submitting comments.  Typically, Posts usually have commenting available by default and Pages do not usually because you wouldn’t want people to comment on pages like contact form, FAQ, or policies.

However, you may have informational Pages that you wouldn’t mind your readers to comment on, in that case you can set it to allow comments for certain Pages.

 

 

SORTING

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This is a minor difference, but when you go look at all your Pages in WordPress, they are listed in alphabetical order, and under Posts, you will see they are listed chronologically.

 

 

NAVIGATION MENU

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Both Pages and Posts can be added individually to the main menu of your website, however, Pages will never be seen by anyone if they are not added to the menu.

This is also true for Posts if you don’t use your Blogroll as your homepage.  If you have a static home page by selecting one of your Pages, then your Posts can only be seen if the “Blog” Page is added to the menu.

If you do use your Blogroll as your homepage, you can still add individual posts to the menu or organized them in different ways using Categories and Tags.  I will expand on this more below under Organization.

 

 

ORGANIZATION

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The final difference between Pages and Posts are the way they are organized.

PAGES:

Pages are organized as Parent or Child pages in a hierarchy structure.  When you create a Page, the Page Attribute on the right menu has a “Parent” drop down menu that you can choose a Parent Page for your current Page.

If you do that, the current page turns into the Child Page of the Parent Page you chose, which will affect the URL structure like this:

Parent Page URL: http://yourdomain.com/parent-page-name/

Child Page URL: http://yourdomain.com/parent-page-name/child-page-name/

Of course, this is up to you if you want to choose a Parent or not for the Page you are creating.  I usually don’t choose one.

 

POSTS:

You can organize your Posts with Categories and Tags which are awesome to use in your main navigation menu.  Every Post should have at least one category and a tag, there are usually more if you wish.

Because your Blogroll only lists your Posts in chronological order on your site, your readers may have a hard time finding certain posts as they would have to scroll through pages and pages of your Blogroll to find a certain topic.

Using categories and tags will be an easy for your readers to find all the posts related to a certain topic.

Let’s say your site is about cooking and have recipes to share, this is how you would use categories:

• Create categories like Baking, BBQ, Vegetarian, and Meat Lovers;
• Select one or more category in your posts;
• Put the categories on your main menu or side widget; and
• A reader could click on the Vegetarian category to see all your vegetarian recipes.

You can further narrow down your recipes with tags.  For example, the vegetarian recipes, can further use tags to identify ingredients used in it.  Then, you’re audience can click on those ingredients to find more recipes that uses those specific ingredients.

Categories and tags are great way to organize your Posts and your readers can find things better this way.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

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I hope this post explains the differences between a WordPress Page vs Post very well to you.  If you’re a beginner and want more training on how to blog, you should check out the place where I’ve learned all this from: Wealthy Affiliate.

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