Wordpress what is the difference between categories and pages

As soon as you publish a post not a page the front page error message and searchbox that appears on every new WordPress. COM blog will be gone. An Automattic Brainchild.

Check out our Support site , then Search for:. May 15, at pm You need to be aware that: 1. May 17, at pm Hi again, Laura. For instance, politics, sports, social, art , etc. Every category should have:. Apart from creating categories that way, you can also assign them whenever writing or editing a blog post. Tags are a great mechanism if you want to identify a piece of content by some specific keywords.

Simply, pick a few words that describe a given post the best. The main difference between categories and tags is the way you use them. In a way, categories are meant to indicate the genre of the post, so to speak. Tags, on the other hand, go much more in depth and indicate the individual things that the post talks about. Therefore, you can — or are even expected to — use multiple tags with a single blog post. For example, if I write a post about Michael Phelps winning gold at the Olympics, I can add the following tags: Michael Phelps, gold, swimming, Rio, Olympics, butterfly.

And the list could go on. Usually, when read together, tags should somewhat sum up the idea of the post. More importantly, just like with categories, you can also assign tags when editing a blog post. Like so:. Next, go to Search Appearance , and switch to the Taxonomies tab. Doing so will effectively prevent Google from indexing your category listings themselves. In the end, categories and tags in WordPress are very important when it comes to organizing your website content and making sure that everything is easy to follow for the reader.

Those categories and tag assignments are collected on an Archive Page. Depending on how your site is set up, WordPress will automatically create one or more of the following Archive Pages:. One thing to remember about Posts: You create the Posts in the WordPress admin area, then assign it to a category. WordPress takes care of positioning that Posts on your site and managing where it appears in your archives.

Those archives are automatically updated as you add new content. WordPress takes care of the tedious work of managing your website. On the surface, Pages appear to be nearly identical to Posts. Pages are not part of the date-organized stream of Posts that you see on Archive Pages or your blog Page.

In other words, any place where you see a list of Posts, you will never see a Page mixed in. These two facts raise some questions about how Pages are organized and displayed on your WordPress site.

That section could include separate Pages with information about your location, your staff, your company history, and a contact form. All related Pages can be grouped under a parent Page. The related Pages become sub-Pages and create a logical section of your website. So, the Page that includes information about your staff will have a URL that looks like this:. This can be a compelling way of organizing traditional web content. It also has some SEO advantages, as Google and other search engines can detect that Pages in a given section are related based on the structure of the Page addresses.

Pages can also be organized by placing them on the WordPress custom menus. The menu location is determined by your theme. Most themes include a primary menu that appears near the top of your website. Pages of lower importance can be positioned on secondary menus — many themes include footer menus or utility menus. You can even add menus to any sidebar location using a WordPress menu widget. The point is that menus are a critical way that Pages are organized and presented to your visitors.

These are cornerstone Pages featuring the essential information that seldom changes. This is the information you want your visitors to easily find without a lot of effort. Posts are best used for things like blogs, news stories, event announcements, and anything time-sensitive. You need to use a Post if you want your content to appear as a new item for the readers who follow your updates by RSS.

Posts are also suitable for any content that has lots of individual entries that need to be organized around a common theme — using categories and tags. For example, you may Post a music review that you wish to organize by genre. Create a category for each genre and then assign each of your reviews Posts to an appropriate category. Pages work best for content that needs to be regularly accessed. Your most important Pages will be linked from the primary menu on your site. If you are building a more traditional business website as opposed to a blog, you will use Pages for most of your business content.

Additionally, you should use Pages for any content that is organized hierarchically. For example, you might have Pages for each department in your company.

Also, if your theme includes custom Page templates, use Pages whenever your content requires the special layout provided by the template. The Home Page. Should your home Page be a Post, a Page, or something else entirely?

Most blogs display a list of Recent Posts on the Home Page. However, a good business website will have more than a list of Blog Posts on the Home Page.