Often WordPress beginners can 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? They seem to have similar fields on the dashboard and look the same on the website. Why do I need both? When should I use one or the other? 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 the majority of your site’s content. Posts are content entries listed in reverse chronological order on your blog’s homepage. 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 also 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 RSS feeds. This allows your readers to be notified of the most recent post update via RSS feeds. This can be useful if you intend to create a daily or weekly newsletter for your audience to subscribe too. The very timely nature of posts makes it extremely social. You can use one of the many social sharing plugins to allow your users to share your posts on social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

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 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 supposed to expire. Sure you can go back and make updates to it, but chances are you will only have a single version of your ‘about’ page.  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 and thus do not include social sharing buttons, or comments.

Unlike posts, pages are hierarchical by nature. For example, you can have subpages within a page. 

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 these custom page templates feature comes in very handy.

FAQ’s

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 don’t need to worry about it. Focus on making your site organized for the user.