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The Difference between WordPress Page, Category and Post!

links: http://www.thenichestorebuilder.com/the-difference-between-a-w

September 17, 2008

Now that you have Installed WordPress, Updated your WordPress User Profile and set your Permalink Structure, what comes next? Building a Website with WordPress is very similar to other content systems for a website, but you have this thing called “Posts” which are constantly updated and changing! That’s actually the main reason search engines love it so much!

What is a WordPress Page?

A WordPress Page is best described as a MAIN SECTION of your site that is not often changed. You want your pages to remain constant throughout your site. Good examples of WordPress Pages are:

1. About Page – Telling your readers who you are and what your site is about.
2. Contact Page – Informing them how to get in touch with you through a form or email address.
3. SiteMap Page – Self explanatory, this is a page that lists ALL your website content.
4. Links or Resources Page – Links or resources that may be useful to your visitors.
5. Store Page – A Page that leads to all your other shopping related pages.
6. Services Page – Where you offer or display the services available for your readers.

What about Subpages – or pages with a parent page?

When you create a WordPress page, it will ask you if it should be nested within the hierarchy of another page. In most cases, you are fine with standard pages being on their own, but a good example of using parent pages, would be if you have 5 authors who write content for your site. You would use your main About Page as the parent page, and create a new page for each author to provide their own specific information!

1. About Us (Parent Page)
   1. Mark Hansen
   2. John Doe
   3. Jane Smith
   4. Willy McGiving
   5. etc….

What is a WordPress Category?

A WordPress Categoryis basically a summary page, that contains links or a brief synopsis to full posts, specific to that category topic. Think of your wordpress categories like newspaper sections:

1. Local News
2. National
3. Sports News
4. Business
5. Classifieds, etc…

As a visitor enters your site and sees all your categories, they may be interested in reading more about Sports. When they click the link, they are taken to a list of posts or articles, related to sports topics! In my case, I am creating a site about Do-it-Yourself projects for my readers, so I will create a specific set of clearly defined categories that will lead them to posts, specific to those topics, for ex:

1. Kitchen Projects
2. Bathroom Projects
3. Utility Rooms
4. Bedroom Projects
5. Garage Projects
6. Landscaping
7. DIY Decks
8. Auto Repair, etc etc..

When a visitor comes to the site and wants to find specific articles, they can immediately narrow their search by going into the Specific WordPress Category.

What about Subcategories?

Just like the pages example above, we can help guide our visitors to exactlywhat they want by using subcategories! When you create your categories in WordPress, you are again given the ability to designate a parent category. As my own site grows, I may choose to break each category into several project specific subcategories:

1. Kitchen Projects (Category)
   1. Cabinets
   2. Flooring
   3. Counter-tops
   4. Lighting
   5. Appliances, etc.

By doing so… visitors will find exactly what they wanted in less than 1-2 clicks of their mouse!

What is a WordPress Post?

Very simply, a WordPress post is just like an article in a newspaper! What you are reading right now is a post… it’s a single article focused on a specific topic! In this case, the post is about the Differences between a WordPress Page, Category, or Post. Most of what you write on your new website are going to be WordPress posts, related to your WordPress categories, in line with the overall topic of your site. A WordPress post can be related to several categories, but I have found that is usually the case when you don’t plan your main categories well enough! (Like this site! LOL) Ideally, your posts will be written for 1 category, or 2 at the most!

I will talk quite a bit more about these different areas in the coming days as we start adding pages, categories and posts to our new website.