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WordPress Basics: Posts vs Pages

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This page offers an overview of posts and pages in WordPress; posts and pages are the most important types of content in WordPress and key elements of your DartWrite digital portfolio.

For more detailed guidance on working with pages and posts, try CampusPress's guide on Pages & Posts.

Once you are logged into your portfolio site at journeys.dartmouth.edu, you have access to the WordPress Dashboard and the editing ribbon. In both locations, you will see options to add new posts or new pages. On the Dashboard, you can view all of your existing posts and pages

In WordPress, posts and pages behave differently:

Posts

Posts are designed to dynamically interact with your site menus and navigations. By default, posts are published with associated metadata, including “author” and “date” fields.

You can add more, optional metadata by adding “tags” or “categories” to the post. Each metadata field allows you to manipulate where on your site the post is displayed. A post might be the right content type If:

  • you want part of your site to include a stream or feed of content in reverse chronological order,
  • or, you want to group posts that share the same tag or category

It is the metadata - the date, the tag, and the author, that allow the site to dynamically group those posts together.

Pages

Pages, on the other hand, behave like static web pages. They don’t come with author, date, or category fields. A page might be a better content type for material like an “about me” page or a page dedicated to a specific class. While you might update those pages occasionally, you probably expect them to always stay in the same place on your site navigation.

The template that came with your portfolio site includes only a few pages and no posts.

Editing your Posts and Pages

While pages and posts behave a little differently, editing pages and posts is very similar. You have the same options to publish pages and posts, the same text editor, and the same media tools.

To explore pages and posts on your DartWrite portfolio, visit journeys.dartmouth.edu, and login.