If you are a new WordPress user you may find it strange that WordPress will allow you to make both Pages and Posts for your site. So what is the difference and why should you use one type over another when creating your content…
The difference between a Page and a Post is very small and only a few settings are not provided between the two content types but lets first start off by looking at how both can be used to setup your sites content.
Most websites will have a handful of Pages that describe the site including an About , Copyright, Contact Form for questions and basic management of the site.
The Page content type is best for this information and this handful of pages can be listed in a menu with direct links to the page content.
In addition to the few standard pages that you need to setup all the background information to your site is your content.
Content that you write about may be a few pages or it may be hundreds or thousands of pages.
The Post content type is best used for this type of data and can be sorted in a menu system by category.
Each Category will link to a directory listing of posts you place in that category. Depending on your Theme your Category directories may show single links to posts or it may show excerpts or full posts within that category.
Example
If you run a website about electronics you would want to setup all of your pages(pages) to let your visitors know about your site. About, contact, copyright and other….
Then you would want to add categories for each type of electronics that you talk about and place posts in those categories.
On your front page you can display blocks of posts like a news site would sorted by category or you could display a loop of posts sorted by date.
Example 2
You run a website for a pizza place.
You only need a hand full of pages just like you would have for a static HTML website but you want to use WordPress so you can edit your pages as needed.
You will need a Home, About, Directions Map, Contact, Menu and a page with images of your seating and events that have happened.
In total you will have about 10 or so pages depending on how creative you get.
In this case you can use ALL PAGES.
Pages are great for this example website because you can setup direct links to each page and the content does not need to be placed in categories.
Your menu system can be set up to let the visitor pick from dynamic dropdown menus that can show sub pages.
A sub page is when you write a page and set the parent in the edit view inside WordPress.
To make use of this feature in this Pizza Place website you may have a company that has more then one location. In this case you would make a parent page and name it location and under that you can put the other store names.
When your visitor accesses the menu on your site and hovers over the Locations the menu will popout and show the pages for the other restaurants they can visit.
It may look something like this:
Locations
xxxUptown
xxxMidCity
xxxDowntown
xxxSunnyBeach
Final Note
As you get deeper into WordPress you will find many ways to manipulate your content. Single pages can be used to display Sidebar and Blocks of content on your site and posts have the option of allowing an excerpt or the full content of the page.
For now you should understand when you are desiging your site
Use Pages for Single Pages that do not need to be categorized and will be limited to a handful of specific content.
Use Posts for content that you know there will be a large number of posts written. You can use a single category if you are setting up a standard Blog type site where you use WordPress in a Diary format or you can sort your posts and display them in very custom ways as to provide directories or basically any format of site that can be made in other content management systems.
Posts Many – Pages Few.
Good Luck.
