Posts and Pages

WordPress offers you two ways of publishing information. Posts, which are stories arranged in date order, that can be commented on, and appear in a feed, and Pages, which are outside the date structure, don’t appear in the feed, and cannot be commented on.

When we set up a new site, we ask whether the site will be news based, or information based. The only difference is how we configure the home page.

On a news based site, the home page will contain a listing of the most recent posts, arranged in date order. This is the default (blog) behaviour for WordPress. Visitors can comment on the stories (subject to restrictions), and this presents the most dynamic type of site, ideal for the purposes of presenting ongoing activities of a group or project.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 44429.6. We’re on a mapping survey near the Cardassian sector. Captain Picard. Episode 186. “The Wounded”

On an information based site, a static home page has been enabled, and the listing of posts is pushed onto a sub page – usually called News. This is a more traditional web site, suitable for presenting a more general picture of a service, group, or facility.

As administrator, you can change the focus of your site from the dashboard, under Appearance > Customize, there’s an option for Static Home Page, where you can choose a page, as your home, and a page as host for your news feed.

When you choose a page as your news feed, you can no longer see the content on that page, so it might as well be an empty page.