WordPress: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. Adding Pages and Menus

In previous chapters, you focused most of your attention on WordPress posts—the blocks of dated, categorized content at the heart of most WordPress blogs. But WordPress has another, complementary way to showcase content, called pages. Unlike posts, pages aren’t dated, categorized, or tagged. They exist independently of posts. The easiest way to understand the role of WordPress pages is to think of them as ordinary web pages, like the kind you might compose in an HTML editor.

You’re likely to use pages for two reasons. First, even in a traditional blog, you may want to keep some content around permanently, rather than throw it into your ever-advancing sequence of posts. For example, personal blogs often include a page named About Me, where you provide biographical information. You don’t want to tie this page to a specific date—you want it easily accessible all the time. Similarly, businesses might use pages to provide contact information, a map, or a list of frequently asked questions. You can even create a fine-tuned home page to greet your visitors, instead of using the default reverse-chronological list of posts.

Another reason to use pages is to build simple sites that don’t feel like blogs. Some people call these sites brochure sites, and the description isn’t entirely complimentary. That’s because brochure sites present a collection of fixed information, while blogs feel live and interactive. However, there’s a wide range of possibility between ...