WordPress Posts vs Pages: Understanding The Differences

Building a WordPress website for the first time can seem a bit overwhelming especially if you are a beginner. This is especially true when you start adding content to your website and you come across two seemingly similar menu items – Pages and Posts.

Both pages and posts are used to add content to your website but what are the differences between them? Sure, they might look similar in the WordPress admin dashboard but trust me, they do serve different purposes when adding content to your web pages.

In this article, I want to take a look at WordPress pages vs WordPress posts and talk about the differences between them. We’ll look at when and how to use each of them so that you have a good understanding of whether you should create a page or a post when creating content for your website.

What’s The Difference Between WordPress Pages And Posts

The difference between WordPress Pages and Posts is actually pretty simple.

WordPress pages are used to create and display all the static content on your website – pages that don’t change very often. These pages would include your About Us and Contact Us pages as well as any legal pages such as disclaimers and terms of service pages. You would usually find these pages in your menus.

WordPress posts, on the other hand, are used to create and display creating dynamic content such as blog posts and news articles. You will usually find these posts in the blog section of your website and they are usually displayed in reverse chronological order (although WordPress makes it easy for you to specify exactly how you would like your posts displayed).

So, in a nutshell, WordPress pages are your best option for pages where the content doesn’t change often while posts are perfect for content that is added frequently.

Where To Find Pages & Posts In WordPress

You can find both the Pages and the Posts options right on the WordPress admin menu.

Under the Pages menu item there are two options:

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• All Pages
• Add New

Under the Posts menu item there are four options:

• All Posts
• Add New
• Categories
• Tags

WordPress Pages Explained

As mentioned, WordPress pages are used to create all the static content on your website. Because these pages are static or evergreen, they wouldn’t include things such as dates or author details. They generally present an overview of your business or website rather than specific information attributed to a single individual.

Because of this, pages generally aren’t meant for social sharing or engagement so they don’t include things like comments or social sharing buttons.

How WordPress Pages Are Organized

WordPress pages have a nifty feature that allows you to organize them in a hierarchy. What does this mean?

Basically, you will be able to create a navigation structure for your website that makes it really easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for when they visit your website. This structure is created by using parent and child pages.

What Are Parent And Child Pages

Imagine a pyramid, with the parent page at the tip of the pyramid and the child pages underneath. A parent page is therefore a top-level page that can have any number of child pages underneath it.

For example, if you own a bed and breakfast or hotel, you could create a parent page called “Accommodation”. And instead of trying to list all your accommodation options and pricing on one page, you could create child pages for each suite that you have, such as “Honeymoon Suite” and “Family Suite”. You could then build your WordPress menus to reflect this hierarchy so that people can easily find what they are looking for.

As an example, the page hierarchy for a B&B or small hotel might look like this:

Home (Parent Page)
Accommodation (Parent Page)
     - Honeymoon Suite (Child Page)
     - Luxury Suite (Child Page)
     - Family Suite (Child Page)
     - Rates & Tarrifs (Child Page)
     - Specials (Child Page)
Facilities (Parent Page)
Activities (Parent Page)
     - Hiking (Child Page)
     - Trail Running (Child Page)
     - Swimming (Child Page)
     - Nearby Attractions (Child Page)
Reservations (Parent Page)
About Us (Parent Page)
Contact Us (Parent Page)

As you can see from the above website structure, pretty much all the pages with the exception of the “Specials” page and “Rates & Tariffs” pages don’t need updating often. In fact, even these pages would most likely only need updating only a couple of times a year if that.

Types of WordPress Pages

Here are a couple of examples of pages that can be created for your WordPress website:

• Home Page
• About Us Page
• Contact Us Page
• Disclaimer
• Terms Of Service
• Privacy Policy
• Thank You Pages
• Landing Pages
• FAQ Pages
• General Information Pages

WordPress Posts Explained

Unlike WordPress pages, WordPress posts allow you to add content to your website that your clients and website visitors can interact with.

Posts are typically used for articles, announcements, events, product updates or launches, and news, with each post allowing users to either share on social media or add comments. Posts are therefore an awesome way to create engagement with your clients and followers and they help you build an interactive and dynamic website.

By default, WordPress posts display important information such as post authors as well as publishing dates and times (depending on the WordPress theme you use, you can hide this information if you would like to).

Another important aspect of posts is that they are displayed in reverse chronological order with the most recent posts being at the top of the page.

How Are WordPress Posts Organised

WordPress gives you the option to organize your posts by using categories and tags. This is especially helpful if you plan to add a lot of content to your website.

Organizing your posts using categories and tags not only helps you to create a good structure for your website by allowing you to group your content correctly but it also helps your visitors and clients to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

What’s The Difference Between Categories And Tags?

While WordPress categories and tags are both used to group and organize the posts on your website, they are a little different.

Categories

Categories are used to group similar posts together and create different sections of your website.

Generally, they are used for broader sections and topics on your website. For example, if you are a food blogger you could include categories on your website such as recipes, menus, and cooking tips.

Posts categories are equivalent to parent and child pages in that they can also be arranged in a hierarchy. However, in the case of posts, they are called categories and subcategories rather than parent and child pages.

For example, in our food blogger example, you could have a category called recipes with subcategories for breakfast, lunch, and supper.

Categories can also be used in your website URLs depending on how you set up your permalink structure. For example, your URL could look like this:

www.foodblogger.com/breakfast/egg-and-bacon-recipe

In this example, “www.foodblogger.com” is your URL, “breakfast” is your category and “egg-and-bacon-recipe” is the name you have given to that post.

As you can see, using this type of permalink structure also helps search engines quickly and easily understand what your post is about.

Tags

Tags are used to group similar posts together based on specific topics rather than broader sections. They allow you to use specific keywords and labels to refine your topics and you can use any words that you think are relevant to your post content. In a way, tags explain what a specific post is about.

For example, in our food blogger example, for the lunch category, you could have tags such as “Salads”, “Chicken”, and “Fish” (although these could also be subcategories depending on how big your website is).

What’s great about tags is that you can use as many tags as you like for a particular blog post.

For example, if you are writing a blog post for an air fryer roast chicken recipe, you could include tags such as “Air Fryer”, “Chicken”, “Roasts”, “Dinner”, and “Easy”. You could then group all your recipes that use the “Air Fryer” tag together.

Sorting WordPress Posts Using Categories And Tags

WordPress makes it really easy to sort your posts by using your categories and tags. This not only helps you to manage your website better but also makes it really easy for clients and website visitors to find what they are looking for.

For example, you could create menu items that will pull up all the posts you create around a specific category or tag.

You can also use widgets to display specific information from your categories and tags and if you need to, there are also plugins that give you cool ways of displaying your posts in a more organized way.

Conclusion

Pages and posts make it easy to sort and display all the content on our website quickly and easily!

In short, pages are for static pages that don’t change often while posts are used for dynamic content that can be sorted and displayed by date, category, tag, or author.

I hope that this article has helped you to understand the differences between WordPress pages vs posts but, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments section below!