What are the Differences between Posts and Pages in WordPress?
It is easy for a beginner to be confused between posts and pages in WordPress. By default, WordPress offers two types of content: posts and pages. It is easy for a beginner to be torn between using posts and pages. The two tend to look similar but they look different. This post will help you know when you should post and when you should use a page.
What are posts?
In WordPress, posts are basically blog content that will be listed in reverse chronological order; the newest posts come on top. If you are using WordPress as a blog or updating blog content for your website, then what you need to do is use post. From the dashboard, you can add and edit the WordPress posts from ‘Posts’ on the menu.
Upon clicking on posts, the editor will load up. You can then add the title and the body. If you have categories added, select the relevant categories for your post. The best thing about the WordPress editor is that you can write in plain text or using HTML. Always preview your posts before publishing to make sure everything is fine.
The nature of posts is that they are published with date and time in mind. They can be syndicated through RSS feeds. This makes it easy for you to notify your readers of new posts. RSS feeds can be used to deliver email broadcasts through various services like Aweber, MailChimp and Constant Contact. The timely nature of posts is what makes them social. Posts also encourage conversations and have a built-in comment feature that allows users to leave their comments. You can turn off the comments by going to Settings>>Discussion.
What are pages?
These are static types of content. They include the about page, contact page, privacy policy and so on. While the date a page is published is stored in the WordPress database, pages are timeless entities. Pages don’t expire. Pages are also not included in the RSS feeds by default.
To add or edit pages from the dashboard area, go to ‘Pages’ menu and click on ‘Add New Page’. Add the title and body of your page. There are no social sharing buttons on pages because pages are not meant to be social. Pages also don’t have a comments section. What is more is that pages are hierarchical by nature. It is possible to add subpages or child pages in a page. A page can be turned into a subpage by selecting parent page from the Page Attributes when editing.
WordPress will allow you to create custom page templates using a theme. You can customize the look and feel of your web pages. In many cases, posts and pages in WordPress look almost the same. Custom page template feature comes in handy when creating things like a gallery page or a landing page.