Introduction
Through various discussions, we’ve encountered a fair amount of confusion regarding the true nature of a blog. In this article, I aim to clarify how blogs work, highlight the distinctions between blog posts and regular web pages and help you determine the best option for your specific needs. Whether a blog or standard web pages are the right choice, we’re here to assist you in making the best decision.
All the websites we create are built using WordPress, a powerful and widely used content management system (CMS). A CMS is a platform that allows users to create, manage, and update website content without necessarily needing advanced coding skills. WordPress is particularly popular because of its flexibility, user-friendly interface, and vast ecosystem of themes and plugins, making it an excellent choice for both standard web pages and blogs. Whether you need a simple website or a feature-rich blog, WordPress provides the tools to create and manage your content with ease.
If you decide that a blog would benefit your business, we can include a blog in your web design package or add a blogging facility to your existing website (only applies to website’s created by Netmonics). You may also require some training if you want to create and maintain your blog articles yourself.
Table of Contents
Why Bother Blogging?
Blogging allows you to attract an audience of individuals who are genuinely interested in your area of expertise.
The idea is to publish articles on a regular basis cover the topics that interest your followers and establish yourself as an authority in your subject area. You can further your rapport with your audience by enabling comments on your blog posts and answering the questions that your readers may have.
You can also create an emailing list to notify your readers of new material and if relevant include offers. The eventual aim can be to convert some of your followers into customers once you have built sufficient trust and they’re ready to make a buying decision.
Another benefit is that blogging also forces you to research the fine detail of your area of expertise in order to explain it clearly with examples. It can enable your audience to become ‘experts’ themselves, appreciate the work that you do and ease the sales process to some extent.
Please also see my pages on Content Marketing
The Main Blog Page
The image shows the main blog page for a recipe blog. The articles are initially displayed in reverse chronological order, can be reordered, searched and filtered.
The main blog page lists all the blog posts, usually in reverse chronological order but can be resorted A-Z, Z-A, chronological order etc. Each post is displayed as a preview or excerpt with a title, a short description and sometimes a featured image. Visitors can click on a the preview to read the full article. Unlike regular web pages, blog posts can be filtered by author, date, categories and tags but more on this later.
When a visitor clicks on a blog preview, they are taken to the single blog page, where the full article is displayed.
You can view the above blog by clicking here.
Single Blog Page (Individual Post Page)
The image shows single blog page from a recipe blog.
This page contains the full content of the post, along with comments (if enabled) and navigation to other posts.
Creating Blog Posts
In WordPress, there are two main ways to create blog posts:
We’ll look at each of these in turn.
Using the WordPress Block Editor
The block editor is a tool within WordPress that allows you to build and format content using individual “blocks” for text, images, headings, and other elements. When creating a blog post this way, you start with a blank page and manually add blocks to structure the content however you like. This method offers flexibility, as each post can have a unique design, but it also requires more effort to set up and format each entry individually.
The image shows a blog post being edited using the block editor. ‘Blocks’ of content from the lleft panel can be added to the page.
Once complete, the post can be published. A preview will be generated on the main blog page which when clicked will display the new blog post.
Using a Custom Post Type Form
A Custom Post Type, on the other hand, is a way to create and organise content with a predefined structure. Instead of manually designing each post, a form is created with specific fields which describe the blog topic. For example, a recipe blog may have a title, description, main image and lists of ingredients, cooking instructions etc. The blog page for each entry is then automatically generated programmatically or using a template.
The image shows a list of recipes for a recipe blog, each entry will generate a blog post.
The image shows the custom post type form where text and images can be added to generate a blog post. This form is accessed by editing any of the posts shown in the image above or by clicking ‘Add New’.
This method ensures consistency across all posts and is especially useful for structured content like recipes, portfolios, or product listings. While the block editor gives you creative control over each post, CPTs provide a more efficient way to manage and display structured content consistently.
Blog Page Structure
A blog page is generated, meaning that once you create and publish a new blog post, it’s available on your site and has quite a fixed structure as shown in the diagram below. Typically, the page comprises a number of sections such as a header (1), the content from your post (2), a sidebar (3) and a footer at the bottom of the page (not shown).
So the structure is configurable to an extent but is common to all blog pages and so this is the first limitation. Standard web pages can be of any structure.
How is the URL for the Blog Post Set?
The url for the blog post is determined from a setting known as a ‘slug’ as shown in the diagram. This will result in a URL with the following structure:
[YourWebSiteName].com/blog/[slug-text]
For example, the slug for this post is ‘ what-exactly-is-a-blog ‘ and results in the following URL:
https://netmonics.com/blog/what-exactly-is-a-blog/
Taxonomies
By default, posts can be classified using categories and tags.
Categories
Categories are hierarchical, let’s say you had a food blog with the following categories:
For example, we can display all the spaghetti recipes using the following URL:
https://netmonics.com/blog/spaghetti/
Multiple categories can be applied to a post but this isn’t usually necessary.
Tags
[your-domain-name]/spaghetti or all the Bread recipes using [your-domain-name]/bread
Note that the hierarchical structure allows us to drill down in to very specifically categorised posts.
The url ‘[you-domain-name]/vegetarian’ for example, would display all the vegetarian recipes. Multiple tags can be applied to a single post, so in this example we’d want to apply the ‘vegetarian’ tag to all ‘vegan’ recipes.
Comments
Visitors can comment on your posts, scroll down this page a little to see how comments can be applied to a blog post. This can either be anonymous or you can request visitors register with the site before they can post any comments. It’s usually better to approve posts before they’re published.
Navigation
Previous/Next buttons as seen lower down on this page, allow you to navigate to the previous and next posts by date.
As blog posts are intended to be displayed by date, author, category or tag. It’s more difficult to link related blog posts together and that really isn’t the intention.
Pages can more easily be configured into a series. See this page for an example:
https://netmonics.com/resources/what-is-content-marketing/
See that the next and previous buttons link to the next article in the series.
RSS Feeds
Blog posts can be listed in an RSS Feed although not as popular as they once were, they are still a useful way to allow readers to discover new blog posts on your site via an RSS Feed Reader.
Comparison Of Posts Versus Pages
|
Features |
Posts |
Pages |
Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Published by date |
Posts normally displayed in reverse chronological order | ||
|
Supports taxonomies |
Provides categories and tags by default | ||
|
Provides ownership |
The author can be displayed and posts can also be displayed by author. | ||
|
Allows comments |
Pages can enable comments, but they are usually disabled | ||
|
Complete freedom of design |
The post content is inserted into the content area which limits the design options | ||
|
Generates an RSS feed | |||
|
Can easily create a series of articles |
Pages and posts can both be linked to together to form a series using previous/next button but pages can be linked independently of published date. | ||
|
Hierarchy |
Pages can have sub-pages; posts can’t have sub-posts | ||
|
Use in Menus? |
Pages often appear in site navigation but posts can be added too. |
Conclusion
Blogs are intended to display posts by date, they have the advantage of taxonomies (categories and tags) and can also be displayed by author, date, day, month and year.
Blog posts can be generated, so less effort is required if using the custom post type (CPT) method, just enter your content into a custom post type form, hit the publish button to make the post live, it will automatically be added to the blog post page and relevant categories and tags and is viewable by date as well. This does require some initial set up by a WordPress developer.
Navigation between blog posts can be enabled but means accessing the previous/next blog post by date/time rather than a given post. Pages are better if you want to create a series of articles which are then linked together using previous/next buttons.
Best Use Cases
The best use cases for WordPress posts are blog entries, news updates, and any content that benefits from regular updates and chronological organisation. Posts are ideal for sharing insights, tutorials, industry news, or personal stories, as they allow for reader engagement through comments and social sharing.
On the other hand, WordPress pages are best suited for static, evergreen content that doesn’t require frequent updates, such as an “About Us” page, “Contact” page, “Privacy Policy,” or service descriptions. Pages provide a structured, hierarchical way to organise essential website information, making them ideal for content that users should always have easy access to, regardless of when it was published.