The great thing about blogs is that the newest and freshest material is always right at the top.
And the bad thing about blogs is that the newest material is always right at the top.
So you can write a great post, but over time it gets pushed further away from the front page, accessible only through the monthly archives and via Google.
That’s why Pages are a helpful alternative to Posts.
Pages become the overall high-level structure of your blog. So, for example, on this blog the Pages are
The Curriculum page is the “Parent” page for the Blogging, Core Courses, Facebook, Podcasting and Twitter curricula.
Then each page can have links to posts that have been done over time. So, for example, the Podcasting page has links to courses from Podcasting 101 through 110. These posts were written between March 31, 2008 and July 29, 2008. During that same time, I probably wrote a couple of dozen other posts, and I didn’t write the podcasting posts in numerical order.
By creating the Podcasting page, though, I could bring links to all of the podcasting-related posts together in one place, so that people stumbling upon SMUG (or one of the podcasting posts) can work through the related posts in a sequential manner.
As I write this post (part of the Blogging curriculum), it is Sept. 30, 2008. Soon it will be part of a previous month’s archive, and within a couple of weeks will be off the front page. But several months from now, when someone is wanting to learn all about blogging, she will start at Blogging 101 and work her way through.
Creating Pages is easy. In your WordPress dashboard, click the Write link:
Writing a Post is the default, but if you then click the Page link, you’ll be able to write a Page.
From that point, it’s just like writing a post, except a Page becomes part of your overall navigational structure.
Use Pages with care; once you start them you shouldn’t get rid of them. But if you need to bring order to your blog, Pages are important tools.
