One of the most common questions I probably see getting asked with regards to WordPress is “what’s the difference between a post & a page?”…
Is there a difference?
And which one should you use, for what?
So I figured I’d put this blog post together to outline the difference once & for all & to give you the confidence in knowing which one you should use & when you should use it. ?
Without further ado then, let’s dive in…
Post VS Page – What’s The Difference?
In short, the main difference is that a post is included in feeds, whereas a page isn’t.
This means that if you wanted to publish something that you didn’t necessarily want to update your users about, such as a Terms & Conditions page, then you’d use a page.
If however, you’d like to update your users about your new content & have it displayed in your feeds such as within your blogroll for people to browse in the future then you’d use a post.
The other difference is that because posts are listed in feeds, they’re also (by default) displayed in chronological order.
When it comes to pages, chronology doesn’t matter…
But What Do I Mean By “Feeds”?
Your blogroll is a feed – your search results page is a feed, but on top of those, there’s also another feed on your blog that you potentially may not even be aware of.
It’s called an RSS feed.
If you’re running WordPress & you type “yourdomain.com/rss” into your browser (without quotes), that’s where you’ll find it.
And basically, the RSS feed serves as a way to allow people to subscribe to your site.
People can use feed readers like Feedly to subscribe to RSS feeds & this allows them to read their favorite posts in their favorite readers rather than having to browse multiple websites for updates.
Plus RSS feeds can also be used for webmasters to send out email broadcasts through platforms like Aweber & MailChimp.
So if you were to publish a new post on your blog then it’d be inserted into your RSS feed & those following your blog via RSS would receive a notification telling them that you’d posted an update.
I mean don’t get me wrong, RSS is kinda dying a death & not many people use it now – but it’s always still nice to cater for the few that do.
Pages Are Timeless
Another thing you might have noticed about pages is that typically (depending on the theme) they don’t show published dates, and that’s because pages are essentially designed to be timeless.
I mean sure, you might go back & update the content on the page but more often than not nobody needs to really know when it was updated or published.
Pages are typically for content where the date doesn’t really matter, and if the date does matter (such as on an updated Privacy Policy page) then it’s just added within the content itself.
For posts though, the date is pretty vital, because the content is typically “date relevant”.
As an example, if I was looking for a review of something I’d expect it to be published as a post, with a last updated date, so that I could easily see how relevant the content was.
Do I need to see a date on somebody’s Terms & Conditions? No, I just assume they’re kept relevant – it doesn’t matter.
Posts Have Authors, Pages Don’t…
If you were looking for a review of something, would you be interested to see who’d written the review? The answer is probably yes so that you can determine their credibility etc…
But if you were reading the Terms & Conditions of a website, do you really need to see who wrote it? Does it matter? Nope…
So again, for content where the author is relevant, you’d use a post, for other content you’d use a page.
It’s Theme Dependant
It’s worth me pointing out here that a lot of the things I’ve mentioned are actually theme dependant. So as an example whilst posts typically should show author info, some themes don’t display it…
It’s the same with dates, categories, tags, and all of the other stuff… WordPress puts the information out there by default accordingly to what content the user is viewing (post or page) but it’s up to the theme authors to include it.
A good theme will let you decide whether or not you want to include it.
So To Summarise, The Core Differences…
The primary difference between posts & pages is that posts are included in feeds, pages aren’t – so the content you want to update people about is published as a post, otherwise, it’s published as a page.
The other differences though are as follows;
- Pages are timeless, whereas with posts the date is important
- Author boxes are displayed on posts, and generally not on pages
- Pages typically aren’t open for discussion (most themes don’t display comments)
- Posts can be ordered into categories & can be “tagged”, pages can’t
Hopefully that clears it up & makes it easier for you to choose which one to pick going forward, but of course if you haven’t any questions then don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below. ?
