Each blog is made up of, or can be made up of, two different structures: pages and posts.
You have the choice to make your blog out of a mixture, or to use just one of the types – it’s completely up to you and how you want your blog to appear.
Each of the structures has different features and uses.
Major Differences
The way you use your blog will dictate how you should set it up when it comes to pages and posts. The biggest difference between the two is that posts are instruments to garner you social media attention, while pages are not.
The second biggest difference between the two is that posts are timely while pages are timeless. This means that the blog post where you talk about a recipe, a news item, or even an informative post on something you think is interesting will get published and appear on the front page of your blog until newer, more recent posts push it back. Unless you change the settings, all your posts will be published and appear on your blog in reverse chronological order, which will allow readers to have a look at the most recent content first. They can search for older content in your archives.
Pages, on the other hand, are static. They have no time or date associated to them, and do not move. They exist in a kind of beside-the-blog space, linked to your blog by tabs or through links in your sidebar. These are great to use to publish information that will never change, like your privacy policy, “About” page, or contact information.
Where posts are date and time stamped, pages are not. They never change unless you edit them, which is done through a separate section than you would for posts.
Likewise, to create a new page, you would go to your Admin page > Pages > Add New. Alternatively, click on the name of your blog in the upper left-hand corner of the Admin page and select New > Page from the drop-down menu.
To edit one already in existence, select “All Pages” under the “Pages” menu, and select the one you wish to edit.
Neither structure has a limit, so you can publish as many of each as you would like.
If you wanted to make a website out of your WordPress blog, you can do that easily by making it up entirely of pages. It’s not feasible to have a website made up of posts, because they would change on a daily basis, or whenever you posted new content.
Other Differences
- Posts show up in your followers’ RSS feeds, while pages do not;
- You cannot assign tags and categories to pages like you can with posts;
- You can easily change the order of pages using a simple Plugin that allows you to drag and drop them in the order you choose.
- You can create “parent” and “orphan” pages and have some appear as sub-pages or stand-alone, however you choose – this means your blog or website can be as complex as you wish;
- Readers may leave comments on either, although there usually isn’t much point in keeping the “allow comments” feature turned on for pages: there’s no reason to have someone leave a comment on your “About” page;
- Pages are not shown in your Archives, Recent Posts, or Categories gadgets, if you have these, whereas posts are;
- Pages are shown in the Pages widget in your sidebar unless you choose a WordPress theme that displays your pages in tabs at the top of the blog;
- Followers are not allowed to share pages on social media sites where they may obviously do so for posts; and
- You cannot embed posts into your pages.
Really, how you set up your blog depends entirely on how you want it to look, and the purpose you want it to serve. If your WP blog is there to act as an online journal or informative blog where you plan on posting new content on a regular basis, then it will probably be made up mostly of posts with a few pages here and there. If you want your WordPress blog to be more of a static website, then it will have mostly or all pages. Of course, you can create a WP website and have a blog attached to it, but that’s a post for another day.
How is your blog made up? Is it mostly posts, with a few pages used as mentioned, or do you utilize the Pages function more often? What do you use Pages for?
About Rebecca MacLary
