The Difference Between Posts and Pages

If you’re a WordPress beginner, you might be confused about posts and pages. By default, WordPress comes with two content types: posts and pages.

When should I use posts? When should I use pages? What’s the difference?

Posts

If you’re going to be blogging at all, you’re going to need to use posts. Posts are simply your blog posts. Posts are blog content listed in a reverse chronological order (newest content on top). You’ll see all of your posts listed on your blog page.

You can add and edit your WordPress blog posts from the ‘Posts’ menu on the left in your dashboard.

Because of their reverse chronological order, your posts are meant to be timely. Older blog posts are archived based on month & year. As the posts get older, your site visitors will have to dig deeper to find them. You have the option to organize your posts using categories and tags, which will help visitors sort through your posts. Categories help finding older posts much easier.

Blog posts are like making an instagram post or writing a tweet, the timely nature of posts make it social! I recommend using a social sharing plugin, like Genesis Simple Share, to allow users to share your blog posts in social media networks like Pinterest or Facebook.

Posts encourage conversation and they have a built-in comment feature that allows users to comment on your posts.

Pages

Pages are static and timeless type of content. Visitors will not see a published/updated date on a page. Pages are not filed with your blog posts and you can’t add a category to a page. For example, an About page or a Contact page are pages you will create only once.

Pages are not meant to be social in most cases and don’t need social sharing buttons. For example, you probably don’t want others to Tweet a link to your Privacy Policy page.

Similarly, pages also don’t include comments. You don’t want users to comment on your contact page or your terms of service page. There is an option to enable comments, however, it is disabled by default.

Examples of pages: Contact Us, About, Privacy Policy, FAQ