214 – The Difference Between Pages and Posts

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The Difference Between Pages and Posts

Ryan writes in and asks “Biggest thing I am struggling with is how to organize my site. In particular, deciding whether content should be presented as posts or pages, and how to categorize/tag them.

I don’t love “reverse chronological” for the stuff I am doing. I want it to be organized more logically than that. But at the same time, Blogs do have a way of seeming more “alive” and interesting….

Pages

Pages are static content and are not listed by date. Pages also do not use tags or categories. An About page is the classic example. Pages can be displayed in the sidebar using the Pages widget.

Sometimes themes have template built with different page templates. This allow you to select from a drop down menu which layout you’d like for a particular page.

For example, you could choose from full-width, left-sidebar, right-sidebar and many more!

Pages are static and they cannot be manipulated. They can be organized by Parent / Child relationships.

Posts

Posts are entries listed in reverse chronological order on the blog home page or on the posts page if you have set one in Settings → Reading. If you have created any sticky posts, those will appear before the other posts.

Posts can be found in the Archives, Categories, Recent Posts, and other widgets. Posts are also displayed in the RSS feed of the blog. You can control how many posts are displayed at a time in the Reading Settings.

Posts can be so much more than just a blog, though!

Think of posts as an easy way to filter / display your posts. You can

• you could auto-generate a page with posts from a certain category
• you could display all of your posts in alphabetical order
• you could create a page that has all of your posts written in January
• you could build a page that pulls in the feature images of portfolio tagged posts

It’s also important to note that you can also exclude certain items from displaying in your list of posts.

When to Use Pages vs. Posts

Pages are best used for content that you aren’t planning on changing regularly or modifying the way it’s displayed.

Posts should be used whenever you think you might need to filter the information and display it some way.

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