Page vs. Post – What’s the difference?

January 19, 2011

By: Anna Giles

While many bloggers or internet marketers may not think about it, there are big differences between a “post” and a “page” on the internet. Here at Shearer Painting, we’re fascinated by search engine optimization (SEO) or just internet marketing to to the uninitiated . As we often tell our customers, search engine reviews from Google, Yelp!, Bing, and Yahoo have all but replaced the Yellow Pages (honestly, what do you do with those phone books left next to your door? You recycle them, same as me – who needs ‘em?). It’s for this reason that we’ve decided to write a blog post explaining pages vs. posts in the hopes that others can learn how to be marketing superstars!

A page is “static” and only changes if you edit the page. It contains information about a subject (the classic example), contact information, services provided (if any), and policies.

A page is not listed by date. It is created through a link in the navigation bar, and it doesn’t use categories, time stamps, or tags – and the RSS feed is not included. Let me break it down for you: time stamps are a series of characters; they’re the time at which the computer you’re working on recorded the action taken.

Example of a time stamp: 2011-01-18 T 10:45 UTC

A tag is a keyword associated with certain information. For example, if I wanted to include tags for this post so that people browsing the internet could find it, I would use “post,” “page,” “static,” “keywords,” “tag,” “RSS feed,” “widgets,” etc. That brings us to an RSS feed. A RSS feed, or Really Simple Syndication, is a web format used to publish works like blogs, articles, news headlines, and audio and video in a standardized format. See a picture of a RSS icon (below).

RSS icon often used

Pages can be displayed in widgets on the sidebar and there are many themes that provide templates for page layouts. A widget is an application which it is installed and executed by a web user for a web page.

In terms of hierarchy, pages can have “sub” or “child” pages. These are simply lower-level pages. Comments are optional, but it’s not that common. A page’s url will look like this: http://blogname.wordpress.com/page-title/.

Posts are another animal. An example of a post would be a blog, an article, or news – they’re entries in reverse chronological order listed on a page – they are “dynamic;” so a post is one part of a page. Sticky posts appear before any other posts. Have you ever visited a forum? You know those posts at the top that seemed “pinned” and unmoveable, even if new posts appear? Those are sticky posts; see the example below from Warrior Forum:

Example of Sticky Posts

You can find posts on the dynamic content page, or Blog, tag pages, and category pages. At least one category is required, though tags are optional. As opposed to a page, a RSS feed is included and time stamps are used. “Reading Settings” control how many posts are displayed at a time; in essence, they control how readers see your blog.

In terms of widgets, pages can be found in the Archives, Categories, Recent Posts, and in more manipulated ways. Layout templates are uncommon, but people are working on them. Templates are repeated elements mainly viewable to the page’s audience.

With a post’s hierarchy, some post categories can have sub-categories, but Posts cannot have sub-posts. Comments are optional but extremely common for posts. Should you want your posts to appear on other pages other than your home page, this is how to do it: Front Page.

Hopefully, we’ve answered some questions for you on pages vs. posts. Post your comments below – we want your feedback!

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