Posts VS Pages in WordPress
There are two ways (content types) how you can publish content on WordPress; posts, better known as blog posts and pages. In this WordPress article we will explain what is a post, what is a page, and will also explain the differences between these two WordPress content types and when and where each of these content types can be used.
Posts / Blog Posts
If you are using WordPress as a blog, diary or journal most probably posts are used for the majority of your content. Posts are content entries listed in reverse chronological order on your blog’s homepage. This means that the latest blog post you have written will show up as the first one on your blog homepage. If you check out our Technical WordPress Blog homepage, you will notice that the first blog post has the most recent date.
Blog posts can be organized using categories and tags and since they are published with a date and time, they are syndicated on the RSS feeds. Therefore users who subscribe to your RSS feed will be notified when new blog posts are published. E.g. If you access our WordPress Tutorials Blog feed, you can see that our posts are available on the RSS feed.
By default posts have comments available so anyone visiting your blog can leave comments, to share his or her opinion on what you have written. Such comments encourage conversation, thus attracting more visitors to your WordPress blog or website.
Pages
Pages in WordPress are meant for static content, such as your About Us page, contact page and sometimes even your homepage. If you want to use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) to build a website rather than a blog, read the WordPress tutorial How to change the WordPress front page to a static page to learn how to configure a page as your WordPress homepage. Even though WordPress stores the date and time of when your page was created in the database, unlike with blog posts such date is not published.
The content in Pages is typically timeless, such as our WordPress Plugins page. Such content is never meant to expire, unlike news or special offers blog posts, which are typically valid for a specific time. It does not mean you can never edit your pages once published, but as an example we won’t have a new page for WordPress Plugins each year, such as plugins2013, plugins 2014 etc.
As regards sorting, since pages do not depend on dates, they are hierarchical. This means you can have sub pages within a page but none of the pages precedes the other like with blog posts. It is also possible to have a different template for each page, to assign different looks and layout for each and every page on your WordPress.
Unlike posts, pages do not have comments enabled; you do not want anyone commenting on your terms and conditions page, or on your pricing page.
Difference between a Blog Post and a WordPress Page
| WordPress Option | Post | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Appears in blog post listings | Yes | No |
| Syndicated in RSS | Yes | No |
| Appears as a static page on a website | No | Yes |
| Appears in archives | Yes | No |
| Appears in recent posts listing | Yes | No |
| Can have own template | No | Yes |
| Appears in search results | Yes | Yes |
| Appears in category archives | Yes | No |
| Has a date and time | Yes | No |
How many posts and pages can I have on my WordPress?
There is no limit to how many pages or posts you can have on WordPress. The more content you have the more chances of your website ranking high on Google, so start writing today!
Should I use pages or posts?
Both content types have different scopes and roles in a WordPress website and blog. If you are building a website with a blog integrated in the website, such as our WordPress Security Services website, you should use a mixture of both. For the website content which rarely changes, such as our Contact Us page or a list of WordPress Security services that we provide should use pages. For the blog, where you publish a sequence of WordPress Security articles you should use posts. If you are using WordPress as a blog, diary or some sort of journal, you can use posts only.
If you take a look big news websites, or big software companies websites, they have a mixture of both. Pages which include details about the company and about their products, which does not change frequently, and posts for their blog where they publish updates for their customers and news about the company’s achievements.
