One of the first things that confuses most WordPress beginners is the difference between posts and pages. On the surface, they both look pretty similar—you add a title, write some content, and click “Publish.” But behind the scenes, they serve very different purposes, and understanding that early on will help you build your site the right way.
Posts
Think of posts like journal entries or blog updates. They’re time-based and usually appear in reverse chronological order, meaning the newest one shows up first. If you’re running a blog, writing news updates, sharing recipes, travel stories, or anything that feels like part of a growing collection, then you’ll be using posts. They’re meant to be shared regularly, and over time you build up an archive of them. Posts usually show the publish date, they can be categorized and tagged to keep things organized, and by default, people can leave comments on them. You’ll also often see the author’s name attached.
Pages are better for content that doesn’t change much and doesn’t belong in a timeline. These are your “About Me,” “Contact,” or “Services” sections—foundational parts of your site that visitors can access at any time. Unlike posts, pages aren’t organized by date and don’t use categories or tags. They don’t show up in your blog feed, and most of the time, you don’t need comments on them (though WordPress does let you turn that on if you want). Pages also support something called a hierarchy—you can nest one page under another, which is handy if you want to group similar content together.Here’s an easy way to remember it: posts are timely, pages are timeless.If you’re writing something that’s part of an ongoing conversation—like a blog post, a news update, or a tutorial—it’s probably a post. But if it’s something you expect people to find from your menu and read any time, like your bio or a list of services, that should be a page.Let’s say you’re creating a website for your personal art portfolio. You might have a homepage, an “About the Artist” section, and a “Contact” page. Those would all be pages. But if you also want to write updates about new projects you’re working on or thoughts about your creative process, you’d use posts for that.It’s worth noting that technically, you can have as many pages and posts as you want—there’s no limit. And you can always go back and edit or update them. In fact, as your site grows, you’ll probably end up using both side by side: pages for structure, and posts for content that evolves over time.