The TL;DR is that posts are part of the blog system of WordPress, often published by date and arranged in reverse chronological order. They are organized with categories and tags. Pages stand alone outside of that blogging structure, and are not dependent on the publication date.

If that still seems a little murky, keep reading.

A Brief Look Into History

Back in the olden days of the late 90s and the early 2000s, blogging was just getting started. Teenagers posted their angst on LiveJournal. Blogger was a more professional blogging platform.

Blogger was bought by Google in 2003 and you can still sometimes find it in use today. WordPress was initially released in 2003 and started out as another way to create a blog.

All of these early platforms were designed to be online journals. You would write a post that was the equivalent of a journal entry, and it would be dated and appear at the top of your journal. Every post had a date and was chronologically ordered. Posts were grouped by month and year to create an archive.

That was all fine, but something immediately became a problem: what if you wanted to make an “About Us” page or a “Contact Us” page? If you created a post, titled it About Us, and published it, it would be at the top of your list of posts, at first.

As soon as you wrote a new post, your About Us post would be bumped down. Pretty soon, after you published a few more new posts, your About Us post would be lost within the archives.

Pages were invented to solve this. The blogging platforms each released another type of content that existed outside of the archival system and wasn’t dependent on the date of publication. Pages could be created and added to the blog’s main navigation and they would stay there forever.

Posts

Nowadays, posts are still used as blog posts but don’t have to be. Posts can be used for any type of content, and you don’t even have to show the publication date if you’d prefer your content to be more evergreen.

It’s still a best practice for posts to be organized into categories. Categories help group your content into useful topics, and you can even link to your category archives in your navigation menu.

Tags can be used in a similar way, but think of them more like hashtags on social media—instead of category groups, they’re more like keywords.

Pages

Pages are designed for static content that you always want to exist in the same place on your website. Common examples of pages are the About Us page, the Contact Us page, or a Privacy Policy page. These pages are editable but don’t drastically change very often.

Pages usually don’t use categories or tags. Unless you have a specific reason to do so and want to develop that feature or use a plugin.

Pages are outside of the archiving system, so they’re not found by year or month, and they won’t be pushed down an archive page after new content is published above them. Instead, they exist as standalone pages on the website and are linked to within the header or footer navigation.

Aside: What Does “Blog” Actually Mean?

The word “blog” is short for “weblog.” Jorn Barger, the author of a blog called Robot Wisdom, coined the term in 1997.

Since the word “blog” refers to the entire blog section of your website, a common mistake people make is to refer to each individual post as a blog. Each individual post is a “blog post” and the collection of all blog posts is a “blog.”

You can think of it in the format of an SAT question:

blog is to website
as
blog post is to web page

Get Writing

Now that you have a better understanding of what posts and pages are, go forth and create your WordPress content!

The post What’s the Difference Between Posts and Pages in WordPress? appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Making your blog more interesting is important but not difficult. Use these tips below to improve your blog’s ability to maintain an audience and keep your blog at the forefront of their lists of reliable resources.

Present captivating topics.

A super easy way to make your blog more interesting is to simply present captivating, timely topics. What are the hot trends of your industry? Blog about them. Do the latest world events apply to your business? Address them in a blog post. What are your customers asking about lately? Give them some answers.

There are certain subject matters that are on the minds of your audience. Blog about them and captivate their attention.

Structure your blog posts.

Don’t just spew out the information you have to provide. Structure it in a way that is easy to consume and understand. Before you start writing, begin with an outline.

When careful thought and planning goes into the presentation of your content, your blog automatically becomes more interesting. Structure is an important element of learning. Don’t neglect it. You’re trying to educate and inform. Structured content is required to accomplish that.

Ensure accuracy and thoroughness.

It is to no one’s benefit if your articles are erroneous. Your readers are relying on you to be a resource of accurate and thorough information. Don’t let them down.

When your audience applies your tips and guidance to their real-life business strategies and encounter success, they will hunger for more of your content. If you want to make your blog more interesting, always be accurate and thorough.

Make it reader friendly.

While you’re providing accurate, thorough, and educational information, you don’t want your readers to suffer fatigue. Make sure your content is reader friendly. Use headers, short paragraphs, bullet points, and images. Your audience will thank you for it.

Showcase the expert.

People love free expert advice. Consider including an image of the author alongside the byline, or make use of an author biography block. Doing so also adds a personal touch to the content.

Optimize the heck out of your blog posts.

While search engine optimization won’t benefit your readers directly, it will benefit potential readers using Google’s search engine to find answers to their queries and solutions to their problems. For each blog post:

• Designate a keyword or key phrase.
• Use that keyword or key phrase in your title, URL, blog post content, and meta description.

Lastly, don’t forget to share and promote your blog posts. Encourage others to share, too, by utilizing social share buttons and plugins. Never underestimate the power of attracting new readers.

The post Make Your Blog More Interesting appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Be clear.

It’s one of the most basic rules of journalism: address the who, what, where, when, and how. While you may not be a reporter, your customers want “just the facts, ma’am.” Throughout your website content, your visitors need to be able to identify:

• Who you are – Display your brand name and logo prominently. In your blog posts, reintroduce yourself. Very often in our articles, you’ll see us write something along the lines of, “Here at WebDevStudios (WDS), we like to…” This allows us to remind our readers of our brand name, brand initials, and even personalize our messaging because we write in first-person.
• What you do – A tagline or brief blurb that describes your product and/or services should be front-and-center on your Home page. Aside from that, mention your expertise throughout your page content and blog posts. Whether it’s our Services page, Portfolio, or throughout our blog posts, we consistently refer to ourselves as a “WordPress website design and development agency.” After all, we do WordPress.
• Where you are – There are a myriad of ways to tackle this task. An obvious “Contact Us” button that takes the user to a contact form will make them feel as though they have found you. Having an “About Us” link in your header menu will also work. Many websites solve the issue of “where” by simply stating their city, state, and/or country in the footer of every page.
• When they can access your product/service – A “Purchase Now” button or live chat option will indicate immediate access, while displaying business hours sets expectations. An easy contact form lets the user know you will get back to them later.
• How you can solve their problems – Client testimonials are a great way to answer “how.”

Be concise.

People nowadays don’t read for long periods of time. They scan. Be transparent. Tell your story, but do it quickly.

Be informative.

Your visitors came to you for answers. Share them. Think about the questions your potential customers wouldn’t know to ask. Address them. Empower your visitors to make an educated decision before they make a purchase or click the “Contact Us” button. Yes, be concise, but also informative. Doing so will build trust.

Be accurate.

Check your facts, please. The easiest way to lose a potential customer is to provide fake news. Break trust with your website visitors and don’t ever expect them to come back to your website.

Be influential.

Know the trends before your customers do. Report them on your blog. Be timely. Stay up to date with what’s new and what’s happening now. Then share that information. Your users will see you and your business as cutting-edge. They’ll be influenced to do business with you more often.

Be intelligent.

Write well. Just knowing basic grammar and punctuation rules will probably place you ahead of your competitors. Respect the language in which you write and be mindful. Don’t confuse writing correctly with being formal. It’s good to have a casual tone with your readers and website visitors because it creates a sense of being approachable. However, typos, slang, swear words, and text messaging abbreviations come off as sloppy and unprofessional. Err on the side of good presentation.

Be engaging.

Invite your website visitors to take action. Ask them to follow you on social media or leave a comment on a blog post. You could even create polls or place a call for guest bloggers who are also customers. A fun photo contest or giveaways provide opportunities for engagement. When you engage with your website visitors, you build a community around your business, and that builds loyal customers. Who doesn’t want that?

We hear it often, “But I’m not a writer.” You don’t have to be one in order to write content your visitors love. As the business owner, marketing director, or whatever title you hold at your website, you are the expert of your business, your site visitors, and even your industry. Talk to your audience as you would if you were on the sales floor of a brick-and-mortar. Follow our tips. Soon, you will find your visitors not only remaining on your website longer than usual but also returning for more.

The post 7 Ways to Write Content Your Visitors Love appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Part 3: Can WordPress Multisite Help You?

In the previous two parts, we introduced you to new concepts in WordPress Multisite that a single site installation does not have. In this final part, we will guide you toward an understanding of when using WordPress Multisite is the best option, and help you determine if it is the right fit for your organization.

So far, I have provided a lot of information on what WordPress Multisite is and the benefits it contains, but what about the practical application of it? You came here wondering if WordPress Multisite might be the solution for you. This section will outline key things to consider when deciding whether or not to use WordPress Multisite.

When You Should Use WordPress Multisite

There are some instances when it makes perfect sense to use WordPress Multisite. Multisite typically works best when the sites on the network all run along a similar theme or have a limited differential in terms of required functionality. Let’s take a look at a few prime candidates.

Multilingual Network

If your site needs to be translated into additional languages, using WordPress Multisite can quickly get you there. The theme and plugins will likely be the same across all sites with only content differences. Each language would be its own subsite that could be configured with access only for the translators who need to be able to touch the content. This is a strategy we utilize here at WebDevStudios (WDS) with a subdirectory install that winds up looking like:

• English – http://acmecorp.com/en
• Spanish – http://acmecorp.com/es
• French – http://acmecorp.com/fr

Blog Network

WordPress can be a high-performance blogging engine. If your use case is to put together a group of basic blogs, WordPress Multisite in the answer. WordPress.com is a prime example of a blog network. Users have a limited set of functionality available to them and several different themes they can choose from. The variety in look and feel of sites hosted by WordPress.com is impressive.

While we are on the topic of WordPress.com’s service, I want to mention some of its staggering statistics. 

• 21.7 BILLION page views per month
• 79.2 million new blog posts each month
• ~74 million sites hosted (this number is questionable as the full number is not released)

Wow! That is a huge amount of data and traffic for one WordPress installation, and guess what? Nobody has ever reached the limit of Multisite’s capabilities. As long as you have the hardware to support it, there is theoretically no limit to the number of sites you can host on a WordPress Multisite install. WordPress.com proves that.

Multi-Department Corporate Sites

Earlier, I shared a multi-department Acme Corp example. It is a common scenario we see at WDS, wherein companies desire to have departmental websites in which each department controls its own content and has some limited ability to manage the look and feel from a common style guide.

One such client we worked with tapped WordPress Multisite for their intranet. It was not even a public facing site! It was one of the more creative uses I have come across and included:

• A couple dozen departmental sites
• Centralized file management for forms, memos, etc.
• HR/personnel management
• Employees’ corner
• Monthly corporate newsletter
• Classified similar to Craigslist
• Employee blogs

When You Should NOT Use WordPress Multisite

As awesome as WordPress Multisite is, there are also times when it does not make sense to use. Take a look at these examples.

Each Site Needs Significant Custom Development Work and/or Plugins

When you have a group of sites, even within the same organization, that need a significant amount of custom development work, WordPress Multisite may not be a good idea. One tiny mistake in the code for another site can have implications across the entire network—possibly crashing it.

Even when the “significant custom development” is nothing more than installing a bunch of plugins, WordPress Multisite can cause issues. Some plugins alter network operations in ways that only a super admin should be altering. Ideally, the network will have a well-defined purpose that limits the amount of customizations to functionality that will be needed per site.

A great example of this scenario is my own personal site https://ben.lobaugh.net. Being a developer, I have the ability to go in and tweak the code on my site as often as needed. I know that I can bring down the site if I screw up, but it will not affect anyone else. I am also not worried about ensuring the code I write is safe for a Multisite environment.

Each Site Needs Its Own IP Address

WordPress Multisite aims to make running a network of sites as simple and painless as possible. When you have a network of sites that all need their own IP addresses, a lot of complexity is introduced. It is absolutely possible to make it work, but it will require significant time investment in development operations to configure the servers properly. For a small network with a few sites, this may not be a big deal; but when you get into dozens and thousands of sites, it is simply not feasible.

Ecommerce

Ecommerce is a sticky wicket with WordPress. In recent years, ecommerce support on WordPress has improved dramatically for single site installs; however, Multisite ecommerce support has largely been neglected. This is in part due to the overhead needed to run a proper ecommerce site. There are additional database tables, relationships, and processing power needed to run an ecommerce site, in addition to things such as payment systems and SSL certificate requirements. Though it is possible to run WordPress Multisite in this manner, it requires a significant investment in time and architectural knowledge that usually makes it more time and cost-effective to use multiple separate WordPress single site installations.

You made it!

Congratulations on getting through all three parts in this series on WordPress Multisite. Multisite is a powerful tool that I hope you will be able to utilize. WDS loves WordPress Multisite, and we are always interested to see how others are using it. We would love it if you dropped us a line in the comments. If you would like to chat about your implementation or work with us on your project, head over to the contact page.

Looking forward to hearing about your projects!

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

The post What Is WordPress Multisite and How Can It Help You? (Part 3) appeared first on WebDevStudios.