Are you confused about the point of a blog page? Or perhaps you’ve been trying to separate topics or classes on your blog using pages but are struggling to get it to work how you would like.
Deciding when to use blog posts vs pages can be puzzling so we decided to write a post to explain the difference between a Page and a Post, plus share ideas for separating topics or classes on a blog to help address some of the confusion.
Posts properties
- Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order by default so that the most recent post is the first post that your readers see.
- Posts are dynamic (updated regularly) and have time stamps i.e. display the date posted.
- You can assign tags and categories to organise blog posts.
- Posts appear in RSS feeds – i.e.: your readers who subscribe to your blog will receive your latest post in their feed reader.
Page Properties
- Site pages are displayed independently of their creation date and are more static – i.e.: they remain the same from day to day since they are rarely updated.
- You normally use pages for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently. School & District Websites and Student ePortfolios are pages.
- Pages don’t have time stamps – i.e.: they don’t show the date they were posted.
- Pages can appear anywhere on your blog depending on your theme.
- You can change the order pages appear. Pages are normally displayed in alphabetical order but their order can be changed using Page Order.
- You can’t assign tags and categories to pages.
- Pages don’t appear in RSS feeds so readers need to visit your site to view the latest updates to pages.
- You can create sub-pages which you assign to a parent page to build a more complex site.
Ways of separating topics or classes on a blog
If you don’t want students from different classes seeing posts or information that don’t relate to their class, the best solution is separate blogs for each class. Benefit is students have an increased sense of ownership. However if you want to use just one blog, the best way of separating topics or classes is using categories.
By using categories, students can access their posts by:
- Clicking on their category link in the blog sidebar
- Subscribing to the RSS feed for their post’s category using a Feed Reader like Google Reader.
FINAL THOUGHT
We hope this has helped you understand the differences between Pages and Posts.
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I want to use my blog to post homework for each subject that I teach. I have page set up for each subject. It is my goal to have students to post the homework on Monday (instead of me posting homework) as a way to familiarize students with blogs. It will also give a homework history for each subject. I do not want comments on HW, of course, but I do not know the best way to set up students so they can post the homework (they are called blog HW editors). What do you recommend?
@cjulius, Can you give me the URL of your blog so I can look at the structure of how you are considering doing it? Or a link if you have an example of a page you have set up?
I want to use my blog to post homework for each subject that I teach. I have page set up for each subject. It is my goal to have students to post the homework on Monday (instead of me posting homework) as a way to familiarize students with blogs. It will also give a homework history for each subject. I do not want comments on HW, of course, but I do not know the best way to set up students so they can post the homework (they are called blog HW editors). What do you recommend?
@cjulius, please do not respond to this entry – I forgot to click on email followup… the same entry is below
Hello Sue or anyone else who would like to help.
I’m new to this… It will soon be obvious to you. I have just written my first page of my blog, introduction to me. I have read all the comments on this page and realize that since I would like my introduction to be static, it should be a Page and not a Post. Somehow, I have made it a post, though, and would like to convert it to a page. Besides copying it, pasting it to a new page, and deleting the old post, is there a more convenient click-o-the-button solution?
Thanks for being here! There will be plenty more questions where this one came from, I’m sure!
Unfortunatley your best option will be to copy and paste it into the page and then delete the post. Sorry. No problem at all with the questions – always happy to help.
hi
Thanks Sue. I get it now. 🙂
hi how are you
Thanks for the info here. Helped a lot. My site is mainly going to have pages but I will be editing some of them fairly regularly as I refine my ideas. It is a shame that we can’t use tags on pages, only for posts, because the tag cloud widget is really useful.
Glad the information helped. That is the nature of pages not to have tags or categories. If you are planning to use pages and wanting people to comment on each page you might like to check out the post that tells you which themes allow comments on pages.
Sue, Thanks for all your great information.
On my posts, the most recent comment is coming up last, not first. Is there a way to change this? I’ve scanned through this blog, hope I haven’t missed the answer already here.
Thanks,
Catherine
Hi Catherine, Glad you find my information helpful. Unfortunately that is the difference between posts and comments just to make it all more confusing.
Latest posts get listed at the top while latest comments get listed at the bottom – off course unless you have threaded comments switched on like I have here which means you can reply to each individual comment.
Hope that has helped.
@morksensei Glad my instructions are helpful.
1) From memory not all theme has Home however if the theme you like has home you can’t change that because it is hosted WordPress so your options are more restricted. And you can’t rename it.
2) Normally if you have pages along the top I don’t suggest you use the page widget. No need if they are already shown along the top.
3) Regarding list of subpages – that also depends on the theme. Some show some don’t. Default theme which you are using doesn’t . I normally use a text widget for subpages with links to each subpage and have it in the sidebar.
4) you either need to make your titles shorter or use more subpages. Sorry but no text wrapping option.
Hi Sue! First of all, i must commend you – you’re doing a fantastic job at guiding us newbies. You are a natural teacher! Second (here it comes) a Q regarding pages: I have set up several static pages on my new site (englishbridge.edublogs) and I have ordered the pages the way I like. I have also set the main page to a welcome message instead of the HOME default blog and then directed the blog postings section to a page called “Blog.” All is well. But 3 issues:
1) How do I get rid of the page called “HOME” that was there from the start by default? I have a bad feeling a cannot get rid of it, but if that is the case, can I at least rename it? As it is a have 2 pages “HOME” and “Welcome” both pointing to the same…. page.
2) I have ordered the pages in the order I want them to appear in the tabs, but in the “pages” (widget area) section in the right margin the order is only displayed alphabetically.
3) Along a similar vein, one of my pages has several subpages. I would like them to appear in a different order as well…. Also, I would like a list of the subpages to appear in each subpage (make sense?) so that the reader knows that there is actually more… Without reference to the side bar, I think the fact that there are subpages can easily be overlooked by a reader…is this just a theme problem?
4) If I add more pages, the tabs run off and look nasty. I guess I have no choice but to have short page names in a situation when my site has many pages? I would have thought that the theme would have a nice tab “wrapping function” but I guess not eh?
I know you must be bombarded with Qs, so no worries if you can’t get back to me soon
@Songmirae Thanks for letting me know that the post was helpful. Good luck with your blogging.
Hi,
This was useful for me because I had just created a page and then wanted to post to it but couldn’t. thanks.
@dzurnak3 I can see your avatar here so it must have saved 🙂 Maybe it was just a bit slow?
I need to be able to save my avotar but it won’t save!!!!
@Mrs Burrows How you need to look at it is you use pages for information that you rarely want to update and you want readers to be access regularly. For example, About and Getting Started with Edublogs links at the top of my blog are pages.
What you need to do is add categories to your posts when you write them. Then add the category widget to your sidebar. For example you could have a category for King Lear, John Keats. These will display in your sidebar once you have added the category widget. When students click on the link to John Keats they will be taken to all posts that have the category John Keats. You may also want to add tags and the tag widget to your sidebar.
This post may help you understand how to use categories and tags.