Creating your first page in WordPress is an important part of coming to grips with the platform. In this guide, we’ll explain how to create pages in WordPress, why you’ll want to do that, and what it means to have done so.
For the unfamiliar, “pages” are one of WordPress’s two core “post types” or, more usefully, “types of content.” The other is called “posts”. People often think of those as being “blog posts.” Let’s go over the differences between them real quick.
What’s the Difference Between Posts and Pages?
The reasons you build – and how you use – a WordPress site will differ a lot. Some people get a WordPress site for their dental practice. Others do it to share their thinking with the world. WordPress decided ages ago that all of those people had two needs common enough that they’d be included with WordPress by default. They are making a “post” and a “page.”
To decide if you need to create a post or a page, there are a few questions that I’d normally ask:
- Is this information an “update” about an ongoing situation? It should be a WordPress post.
- Is this information that will be relevant for a long time? (Think of a dental practice’s location, philosophy of care, and billing practices.) It should be a WordPress page.
- Is this information a one-time event you’re looking to mark? “We’re going to the Santa Clara farmer’s market on Tuesday” should always be a WordPress post.
In most websites, posts are used for the site’s blog or any type of content that is time-sensitive or updated regularly. So, ongoing content creation. They support categories and tags for organization, which makes it easy to sort and filter them. Posts are ideal for news updates, blog articles, announcements, product launches, or any content where timing matters.
Pages, on the other hand, are usually created once and rarely updated. Think of pages a common business site might have, like “Contact”, “About Us”, “Services”, etc.
With WordPress, you’ll create new pages using the same basic editor and process as a post. Posts will have some options that pages won’t Under the hood, they’re even stored in the same storage system called a database table. But that doesn’t really matter for most of us. What’s more important is understanding when to use each.
I hope the above questions help you answer when you’ll want to make a WordPress post vs making a WordPress page. If you’d like to learn more about the difference, here’s our guide on the finer points of posts and pages in WordPress.
How to Add a Page in WordPress in 6 Steps
So you’ve decided that you’ve got some content to share on your website. Here are the steps you need to take to publish that content as a WordPress page:
- First, you’ll need to be logged in to to create WordPress pages. Make sure you’ve done that.
- To create a new page in WordPress, you’ll want to navigate to Pages > Add Page on your left-hand navigation panel in the WordPress admin area. This will open the page editor.
If you open the Pages menu item, it will open your Pages dashboard, where you’ll be able to see all your site’s pages. You will see an Add Page button on the top of that page as well. - Now you’re in your page editor and you will see a blank page with the Add title and Type / to choose a block placeholder.
- Name your post by typing its title in the Add title section. This should just be something clear and useful to visitors. Like “Contact Us,” if that’s the relevant title of the page.
- Write the post content. Start typing your text in place of Type / to choose a block.
You can add different elements to your page, like images, lists, headings, etc., by typing “/” or by clicking on the “+” icon that appears when you click in the editor. This will open the block selection panel, letting you choose which element you want to add to your page.
This step is really easy for me to say, but it may actually be the hardest part of how to create pages in WordPress. This shouldn’t be hard because the editor or technology doesn’t work. It’s just that writing good, clear, useful text is an art, and one that can take a lot of time to master. - After you’ve finished creating the content for your page, hit the Publish button in the top right to make your page public.
That should pretty much wrap up our coverage of how to create pages in WordPress. It’s not a complex process. And as you get more seasoned in WordPress, this will become second nature. The first few times can feel intimidating, but I believe in you.
Just make sure you understand the difference between WordPress posts and pages, and you’ll start to forget when creating WordPress pages scared you. Happy publishing!
