Introduction to WordPress

Although pages and posts look quite similar when adding the content into WordPress, the way that you present them on the front-end is quite different.

Posts make up your blog. Each post you create shows up as one entry in the blog and is sorted by most recently added posts (by default). By default posts prominently feature a published date and time, author, as well as which categories and tags they have been assigned to -- all common features of your typical blog.

Posts can also be organized or grouped by Categories (and these days less frequently: tags). This is of particular advantage to bloggers as you can select one or more categories that your posts belong to, and then link to categories (which display those posts in a list) in your menu or other parts of your site.

Pages are meant for just about anything else. They're often described as being used for more static content - the stuff that isn't added to as frequently. Examples could be your About page, Contact page, Privacy page, an Advertise With Me page, or a Services or Sales page once you start making some money with your website.

Don't sweat it if you made a post into a page by mistake - everything can be fixed! A simple copy and paste of all content from a post to a page or vice versa will do the trick. Or you can use a handy page-to-post converter plugin like this one.

Tip: if you want post listing pages in your menu, you don't need to create a page and insert links to your posts - this is what categories are for! Instead the WordPress menu editor provides the option to insert categories, so simply check off the categories for your posts and add the category to your menu. (You can do this with tags too, but in recent years it's become less common to do this).

Tech tip: in the database, pages are stored in the same way as posts. This is because they're actually quite similar data types, the only differences are in what metadata is attached to each. That's why plugins can fairly easily provide the capability to change a post into a page and vice versa.

To add a page, choose Pages > Add New from the WordPress admin menu.

If you are using our recommended page builder, Beaver Builder, you will have the option to use the built-in basic text and image editor, or open the page in Beaver Builder where you can create advanced columned layouts and make use of Beaver Builder's many modules.

In the WordPress admin, choose Posts > Add New then begin writing!

This video will show you a few more details of the Post Editing screen:

Related to posts are comments and protecting your comment forms from spam.

We've found two great ways of protecting your comment form so as to prevent comment spam. If you don't enable at least one of them, you'll soon find yourself attempting to manage thousands of spam comments on a daily basis: we strongly recommend preparing in advance!

Bundled with WordPress is Automattic (the company behind WordPress) owned Akismet. It's an excellent anti-spam solution and we recommend signing up for an API key and getting it configured to work on your site. Info on how to do this is found by going to Settings > Akismet.

Akismet is usually free for those starting out with a blog, but when you reach enough comment spam volume, they'll shut down your access and ask you to pay.

if you want a solution that doesn't cost anything in the longer-term, check out Antispam Bee. We've been using it on our sites for some time now and it's proven to be very reliable! We've found that it catches about 90% of the spam Akismet does.

Categories and Tags are both methods of grouping blog posts. The biggest difference between the two is that categories have a hierarchy, meaning you can have sub-categories, while tags have no organizational structure.

You probably want to use categories for most structure-building and only use tags as a last resort, such as for assigning more minor topics to posts.

Example: you've written three blog posts so far, each about movies, and you intend to write about topics that aren't just movies. You could then create a category called "Movies" and assign these posts to it, and then add the Movies category to your menu (more on that in the next section!) You could then use tags for movie genres, like Horror, Drama, or Comedy.

Example: your blog is intended to be entirely about movies and so using a "Movies" category isn't going to be that useful. Create categories that represent the genres like Documentary; Comedy; Holiday will be more effective.

You create categories and tags by going to Posts > Categories or Posts > Tags. You can also create them 'on-the-fly' as you're creating or editing posts using the sidebar on the right side of the post editor.

Here's a video showing how to create them:

Now that you've got your pages, posts, and maybe some categories created, you can organize them into a navigational structure: a menu!

In the WordPress admin area, select Appearance > Customize to access the visual customizer.

TIp: You may need to create a new menu to begin, if one doesn't already exist. If you already have a menu or two, select the one you wish to edit now.

To add pages to that menu, press the Add Items button. You will be presented with types of content that you can add to your menu. This could be a page, a blog post, or an entire category - listing - of posts (see why you needed to create those first?)

Select the type of content you wish to add to expand the available options. Pages are typically showing by default. Simply click the + button beside any item you wish to add to the menu.

When done adding content to your menu, press the blue publish button at the top of the Customizer sidebar.

Here's a video showing how to edit the menu from the back-end editor: