WordPress gives you two kinds of content, and knowing which one to reach for is half the battle.
Pages are the permanent parts of your site: the homepage, the research overview, the people directory, the contact page. They appear in your site’s menu, they do not carry a date, and visitors expect them to be current whenever they arrive.
Posts are dated announcements: a paper accepted, an award won, a student’s dissertation defended. Each post is stamped with the day you wrote it, and posts collect automatically on your news page, newest first.
The rule of thumb
If it will still be true a year from now, it is a page. If it is an announcement, it is a post.
| You want to add… | Use a… |
|---|---|
| A description of a research project | Page — it belongs on your research page |
| “Our paper was accepted at…” | Post |
| A new lab member | An entry on your people page |
| “Maria defended her dissertation!” | Post |
| Directions to the lab | Page — the contact page |
Where they show up
Pages live in your site’s menu, the navigation visitors see at the top of every page. When you add a page, tell us (or your site’s administrator) if it should appear in the menu — not every page needs to.
Posts take care of themselves. You never add a post to a menu; it simply appears on the news page and, eventually, scrolls down into history as newer posts arrive. That is exactly what news is supposed to do.