Often WordPress beginners get confused between posts and pages. By default, WordPress comes with two content types, posts and pages. As a beginner, you are probably wondering what is the difference between them? It seems to have similar fields in the dashboard. It seems to look the same on the website. Why do I need both? When should I use posts? When should I use pages? In this article, we will explain the difference between posts vs. pages in WordPress.
Posts
If you are using WordPress as a blog, then you will end up using posts for majority of your site’s content. Posts are content entries listed in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Due to their reverse chronological order, your posts are meant to be timely. Older posts are archived based on month and year. As the post gets older, the deeper the user has to dig to find it. You have the option to organize your posts based on categories and tags.
Because WordPress posts are published with time and date in mind, they are syndicated through the RSS feeds. This allows your readers to be notified of the most recent post update via RSS feeds. Bloggers can use the RSS feeds to deliver email broadcasts through services like Aweber or MailChimp. You can create a daily and weekly newsletter for your audience to subscribe to. The very timely nature of posts make it extremely social. You can use one of the many social sharing plugins to allow your users to share your posts in social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn etc.
Posts encourage conversation. They have a built-in commenting feature that allows users to comment on a particular topic. You can go to your Settings » Discussion to turn off comments on older posts if you like.
Pages
Pages are meant to be static “one-off” type content such as your about page, privacy policy, legal disclaimers, etc. While the WordPress database stores the published date of the page, pages are timeless entities. For example, your about page is not suppose to expire. Sure you can go back and make updates to it, but chances are you will not have about page 2012, about page 2013 etc. Because there is no time and date tied to pages, they are not included in your RSS feeds by default. Pages are not meant to be social in most cases thus does not include social sharing buttons, or comments.
You don’t want users to comment on your contact page, or your legal disclaimers page. Just like you probably don’t want others to tweet your privacy policy page in most cases.
Unlike posts, pages are hierarchical by nature. For example, you can have a sub pages within a page. A key example of this in action would be our Blueprint page. This feature allows you to organize your pages together, and even assign a custom template to them.
WordPress by default comes with a feature that allows you create custom page templates using your theme. This allows developers to customize the look of each page when necessary. In most themes, post and pages look the same. But when you are using your page to create a landing page, or a gallery page, then this custom page templates feature comes in very handy.
Pages also have this archaic feature called Order which lets you customize the order of pages by assigning a number value to it. However this feature is extended by plugins like Simple Page Ordering that allows you to drag & drop the order of pages.
Posts vs. Pages (Key Differences)
The differences we list below definitely have exceptions. You can use plugins or code snippets to extend the functionality of both content types. Below is the list of key differences by default.
- Posts are timely vs. Pages are timeless.
- Posts are social vs. Pages are NOT.
- Posts can be categorized vs. Pages are hierarchical.
- Posts are included in RSS feed vs. Pages are not.
- Pages have custom template feature vs. Posts do not.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Posts and/or Pages can I have?
You can have as many posts and/or pages that you want. There is no limit on the number of posts or pages that can be created.
Are there any SEO advantages to one or the other?
Search engines like content to be organized. Timeless content is considered to be more important however there is a lot of priority given to latest timely content. In short, there may be a difference, but as a beginner you do not need to worry about it. Focus on making your site organized for the user.
Thanks WPB. I got the point but still not satisfied with relation to SEO.
Can you elaborate more on it pl?
Darshan, search engines like organized sites. Pages can rank high, but if your site is not organized, then it will hurt you more than it will help.
Thank you so much!
Hi Guys,
This post nailed it right on! Very clear and to the point. It is funny because as a former Developer who just migrated her static site to WP I had those questions of whether to post or add a page. I am well aware of site structure and how to organize it so that was a no brainer. However, where it really hit home was the section with “Posts vs. Pages (Key Differences)”.
It almost makes me want to redo my main page (Find you condition) into posts or something. Yes, I add conditions periodically but honestly I keep my FB page pretty active and that doesn’t drive traffic where I want to.
I decided that I’m going to post some of the content I’d otherwise post on FB on my blog starting now being I am not getting much traffic. Would you agree? I’d love to hear some suggestions as I am concerned as I see the importance of updated posts.
Regards and thanks in advance
Nice idea Astrid. I would recommend posting your newsworthy content on your blog and then link to it from your facebook page. This will get you incoming links/traffic from your facebook page.
Thanks…
RW ~ Thanks for your feedback
Question please: What would be an effective way to do this? Via a widget or simply pasting the link on my FB page? If so, what widget would you recommend.
Regards…
Facebook used to allow blogsites (platforms like wordpress) to automatically post published content to a user’s facebook page. I believe they’ve changed the API and it might still be possible, but I like more control over what goes on my facebook page.
There are some good plugins, that will take your posts, and automatically post them to your twitter feed which can be setup to post to facebook. I could be wrong about this, but this is what I’m aware of.
It only takes 5 seconds to cut and paste in your blog url to facebook, and then you can edit the facebook intro as well, so I like the manual method for this. There are so many plugins that are worthwhile, I don’t feel this action needs one.
Thanks.
Very nicely put. Simple, to the point and accurate! Well done.
I read a lot of articles on WPBeginner and this one is aimed at beginner level. Many of the other articles are more intermediate (I would say) which is fine by me because that’s my level. But I think many “real” beginners would find this article useful.
Yeah this article is very helpful, I think this is one of the most popular questions people ask me when they start a new WordPress website.
Well said.
Man this post is awesome ….. Can I know whether this blog’s newsletter is on Aweber or Mailchimp and do we need to pay for either of these services.
We are using MailChimp. You can see the full list of tools that we are using here: http://www.wpbeginner.com/blueprint/
I work with a lot of businesses that are new to WordPress and this is definitely one area that creates a great deal of confusion among my clients. Personally I think you explained it very well
I have to say that I disagree with this entire article. Comparing Post and Pages is like comparing apples and dynamite.
“Posts” are a tool for publishing and “Pages” are what you display “Posts” on. As you start to delve into WordPress you’ll begin to create custom post types for different parts of a site, and you’ll have to create pages to display these custom Posts. The index.php and single.php are pages just like the custom pages you can create with the page template, but they’re just pages with a more specific purpose.
This article would only hold true if one was to “only” use WordPress as a blog, but let’s face it WordPress has evolved far beyond just a simple blog. It’s a CMS, and there are developers even starting to use it as a Application Platform.
If I didn’t know better. I’d say this article was written by someone with little to no knowledge of the capabilities of WordPress. This is a really disappointing article coming from a site I’ve come to rely on for WordPress related tips and tutorials.
Hi Jason,
This article is written in the beginners guide category for the very beginners. Surely, we understand that WordPress has evolved as a platform itself. However, an infant does not just start running. They have to learn to crawl, then walk, and then they can run. I suggest you look at some of the other articles in the category, and see how they are covering the very basics of WordPress. This category usually covers items that comes out of the box with WordPress (in most cases).
Custom Post Types does not have a visual interface for a beginner to play around with. Even if it did, to utilize its maximum power, they would need to write code. It would be a great deal of ignorance on our part to assume that everyone is a developer. Developers make up a very small part of WordPress industry. Majority of the WordPress users are just average folks (using the platform) without touching any code.
For you to say “Posts are tools for publishing ad Pages are what you display Posts on” is correct and incorrect. By the vary definition of “webpages” every thing on the web is a page. You can’t generalize things to that extent because then we would be arguing semantics. An archive page would be a page. Dashboard would be a page. Everything would be a page. That would not make any sense to a beginner because there is no way to differentiate. Now lets look at it from a WordPress perspective. Posts and pages are both custom content types, and I’d rather not restate the whole article here.
As for displaying custom post types, yes you display those on Archive Pages. If you have to create a custom page template every time to display a custom post type (chances are you are doing it wrong). Sure there are times when you don’t want to have an archive display of CPT’s, and in which case you use a custom page template. However, it is not required to use a Page and a Page template to display custom post types.
Hopefully, what I said in the comment makes sense. I have been running this site since 2009, and I have been using WordPress since 2006. I would not publish something if I didn’t think it was useful to the larger audience.
Best Regards,
Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner
Jason, With all due respect – I disagree. This article isn’t about page templates – I feel it was written to target users that are starting with WordPress and trying to work out whether to go to the posts or pages part of the admin dashboard to publish their content!
I guess it’s obvious that not everyone who frequents this site is an expert – hence the name ‘wpbeginner’.
Trolling by any chance?