[WP 101] Page, Post, Custom Type: What Is The Difference?

If you’re feeling bamboozled by WordPress lingo, this is the blog for you.

WordPress websites usually consist of many different pages and posts. There are many different types of pages, posts, the custom type and more. All of these different types of content are essential to a WordPress website in their own ways, and it’s important to know the difference between all of them as well as why they exist.

One of the great features about WordPress is just how simple it is to publish your content onto posts and pages for people to view. However, WordPress also provides the ability to completely customize this content by using a custom type.

When adding content to a post or page, you are using pre-defined formatting settings that WordPress provides, so all you have to do is add the content you want and then select if you want that content to go to a post or on a specific page. These settings allow you to create a functional and organized website with WordPress.

Custom types are unique and necessary because they allow users to create content other than text posts, such as videos, images, testimonials, widgets and more. This type of content is completely customizable and does not have pre-existing settings within WordPress.

What Is a Page?

Pages in WordPress exist for content that is non-chronological and evergreen, such as About or Contact pages. Pages contain relevant information about your business, service, or products and they can also help organize your WordPress site and make it more user-friendly.

WordPress pages can also be split into pages and subpages for even more organization. WordPress pages also tend to have page templates, which are used the customize the look and feel of a webpage. Many WordPress themes have customizable features for individual pages.

Pages can’t be placed into categories, but they can be applied tags, which is another way to help organize content on a WordPress website, especially with an index or glossary.

However, pages are not stored in your database like files and are not ranked highly in search engines due to the content on these pages being more static, while posts have much more timely content.

What Is a Post?

Posts are pieces of content that appear in reverse chronological order and are organized on a posts page or a blog page depending on how you’ve set up your WordPress website. Posts tend to make up the majority of your website’s content, as they help describe and show the products or services you provide in great detail.

Posts are created to have timely content, although they can be archived as well. Posts have the ability to be both categorized and tagged, which improves the organization of your WordPress site overall, as well as making it more user-friendly.

There is no limit to the number of pages you can have, and posts are also able to appear in RSS feeds, which makes the content in posts much easier to share to other websites and social media. The admin has full control in the backend of which posts are visible and how many, as well as the ability to schedule posts.

What Is a Custom Type?

A custom post type is a post type that you can create for your WordPress website. Custom types are all content based and can be called anything that the creator wants. Using a custom post type is ideal for more advanced users of WordPress, although it can be done using a plugin.

An example of a custom type would be an attachment, navigation menu, map, testimonial, portfolios, products pages, posts and any kind of content really since WordPress has no content restrictions. WordPress provides the ability to have pages and posts, and custom types allow for customized versions of content, with their own organization, categorizing and tagging.

A custom type will also get its own slug in the url, and its permalink. As far compatibility is concerned, because plugins help create custom types, WordPress also supports fully custom templates for custom types. This way, every single part of the content is fully customized from the look and feel to the size and color of the content itself.

What Are The Differences?

Posts, pages and custom types have some differences based on what they accomplish for a WordPress website. Posts have more timely content and are better for search engine optimization, while pages have more timeless content and they don’t really rank on search engines. Pages are organized hierarchically while posts can be put into categories.

Pages cannot be included in RSS feeds like posts can, although pages have the compatibility to have custom templates. One thing that pages, posts and custom types all have in common is that admin can create an unlimited number of them for a WordPress website.

Custom types are different than posts and pages because they are completely created by the admin and have no pre-defined settings within WordPress. They are good content for search engines and the can contain both timely and timeless information about a WordPress website.

Why Are They Important?

Pages, posts and custom types are all essential parts of a WordPress website in their own ways. Pages help organize the content, posts contain timely content and custom types are specifically created to fulfill a need on your website.

Pages and posts can be pre-defined on WordPress websites, but adding custom types happens when there is a need for custom types.

These needs include things like needing to display certain content differently than pages or posts, when content doesn’t need to be chronologically organized in a series, when categories and tags won’t help with organization and when you need additional fields to enter more information about content.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is a difference between a page, a post and a custom type, but they are all important to your WordPress website.

The idea is to decide how to integrate all three (pages, posts and custom types) into your WordPress website so that you’re products or services are presented in a unique way to attract more business.