WordPress Basics: Working With Posts and Pages
So, you’ve got a WordPress website. You’ve logged into the Dashboard. Now what?
For most website owners, sooner or later you’ll want to change some text, update a page or publish something new. WordPress makes all of that reasonably painless once you understand one important distinction: Posts and Pages are not the same thing.
WordPress Posts vs. Pages
They use many of the same editing tools, but they serve different purposes.
Pages
Pages are for the relatively permanent parts of your website.
Think:
- About
- Services
- Contact
- FAQs
- Staff
- Locations
You create and edit them under Pages in the WordPress Dashboard.
Posts
Posts are generally used for timely or regularly published content.
That might include:
- Blog articles
- News
- Company updates
- Resources
- Announcements
Posts can also be organized using categories and tags, which makes them useful when your site contains a growing library of content.
You’ll find those under Posts in the Dashboard.
Editing an Existing Page or Post
Go to Pages → All Pages or Posts → All Posts and find the thing you want to change.
Click its title to open the editor.
Exactly what you see next depends on how your WordPress website was built. Your site may use the standard WordPress Block Editor, a theme builder such as Enfold, or another page-building system.
The important part is the same: make sure you know what you’re editing before you start moving things around.
Changing a sentence is one thing. Reconstructing half the homepage because you wondered what that mysterious button did is another.
WordPress Saves Revisions
Here’s one of the nicer things about WordPress: it can save previous revisions of your content.
If you change a page and later discover that you’ve made a horrible mistake, you may be able to restore an earlier revision rather than reconstructing everything from memory.
That doesn’t mean you should attack the website with complete abandon. It does mean that routine content editing usually isn’t something to be afraid of.
Before You Hit Update
Give the page a quick look before saving it.
Check your links. Look for accidental formatting changes. Make sure you didn’t delete something important. If you’ve added an image, make sure it actually belongs where you put it.
Then hit Update.
Afterward, view the actual page on your website. The editor gives you an editing interface. The website gives you the truth.
One Important Warning
WordPress itself is fairly forgiving. Plugins, themes and page builders can be considerably less forgiving.
If you’re changing content, have at it.
If you’re changing templates, theme settings, plugins, navigation, code or anything else that could affect the entire website, make sure you have a current backup first.
There’s a considerable difference between editing your About page and detonating the machinery underneath it.
Need More WordPress Help?
We’ve put together a larger collection of practical WordPress instructions covering the stuff website owners actually need to know.
And if you’d rather have somebody else maintain the thing:
