WordPress Posts Vs Pages – Key Differences

WordPress is a powerful content management system for creating bigger websites. Though you can create different type of content formats in WordPress, by default WordPress allows users to create only two type of content – post and page. If you are a new user, you may get confused about the differences between these content types and in which scenarios you should use them. In this article let us explore more on the key differences between WordPress posts vs pages.

WordPress Posts Vs Pages – When to Use

A website has some content dependent on time and some independent of time. For example, the content of “About Us” or “Contact Us” pages of a site in general is not dependent on time. They are more static in nature without much changes required over the period of time. A blog post in contrary is relevant to that particular point of time. For example, article on new product launch should be on blog post with the timestamp on it.

In order to indicate the time relevancy of an article, WordPress displays the timestamp on a published blog posts while pages don’t have timestamp on it. Based on the theme you use, the timestamp may display as only date or date with exact publishing time. Posts created are part of blog index and archives and can be grouped with categories and tags. Pages are independent and different pages can be linked in a hierarchical parent-child relationship.

Creating Posts and Pages

When you are in WordPress admin dashboard, navigate to “Posts > Create New” to create new post for your blog. You can see all published, draft and deleted posts under “Posts > All Posts“ section.

Similarly, you can create pages by navigating to “Pages > Create New” section and manage them under “Pages > All Pages” section.

Differences on Content Editor

WordPress content editor has different set of meta boxes for post and page. For example, you can see the meta box “Page Attributes” only for pages to choose the order, template and hierarchy.

On other hand, post editor will have meta boxes for adding categories, tags, excerpt and trackbacks along with option to choose the format.

Though pages have author meta box, author name is not displayed on the published page. Also, by default comments are disabled on pages which can be enabled for individual page in page editor.

Differences on Published Posts Vs Pages

The published post may look like below:

Posts have published date, category, tags and author name displayed while pages have none of these elements.

Summary of Key Differences

Below are the summary of key differences between WordPress posts and pages.

Function / Parameter	Posts	Pages
Grouping	Related posts are grouped under category. Posts cannot be linked in hierarchical manner.	Pages are linked using parent – child relationship in hierarchical structure. Page does not use category.
Template	Generally same template is used for all blog posts.  By default the post template is named as “single.php”.	Different pages can have different templates. By default WordPress uses “pages.php” for page template.
Tagging	Tags are used to create index and link posts having the same keywords.	You can not assign tags to pages in WordPress.
Meta boxes	Posts have “Categories”, “Tags”  and “Excerpt”.	Pages have special meta box called “Page Attributes”.
Blog index	Posts are displayed on blog index page in reverse chronological order.	Pages are not part of the blog index page.
Sidebar Widgets	There are multiple widgets available like related posts, archives, etc.	Generally, pages use fullwidth content format. However, it is possible to use all available sidebar widgets when you use column layouts for pages.
Limit on numbers	Unlimited	Unlimited
WordPress table	wp_posts	wp_posts
Comments	Allowed and enabled by default.	Allowed but disabled by default.
Feed	Part of RSS and other feeds.	Not part of any feeds.
Time bound	Generally time bound and valid for particular time. Hence WordPress displayed date of publishing on the published posts.	Content not changing with time and static in nature. Hence WordPress does not display date on the published pages.
Author	Blog posts by default show author name, though it is possible to hide this based on your theme’s capabilities.	Author name is not displayed in published pages.
Social Sharing	Posts are shared and sharing meta box of the plugin in shown in post editor.	Pages are not shared on social networking sites. Sharing plugins may not display meta box in the editor.
Hierarchical Relationship	You can’t use hierarchical relationships among multiple blog posts.	It is possible to assign a page as parent or child to another page.
Archives	Blog posts are part os blog index, category and tag archives. In addition, there can be author and date archive as well.	Pages are not part of the archives.

Setting Static Page as Front Page

A WordPress site can have a blog index page as a front page or have a separate static page as a front page. You can change this under “Settings > Readability” and for a static page you should have at least one page created on your site. When you choose a “Your latest posts” for front page displays, you should create a page named “Blog” to host the latest posts as an index page.