Posts or pages?

[pepedeticher]

I'm almost done setting up my website. But before starting to add content, there's something I need to figure out.

It's a WordPress site that I'll use to post lesson notes. One post for each lesson, which will usually be linked to a video lesson and a downloadable pdf. The thing is that I don't know if I should use pages or posts for the lessons.

Initially I thought about using pages, but now I'm not that sure. Posts are easy to set up with categories. Also posts are more SEO friendly (not sure about that though), and social friendly. Also, there might end up being hundreds of lessons eventually, which is an extra +1 for posts.

However, posts pose a problem: the order of the lessons is important within a course. Newest first is not the way to go. It would be more convenient the oldest first approach, but not always: in case I need to insert a lesson between two existing lessons, order should be set up manually. Another problem I see with posts is that I might end up having dozens of categories (one for each course, so that I can group lessons accordingly).

On the other hand, pages maintain a nice static structure, but they are less flexible: you have to create page and set the proper links (overall, there's a bit of extra work).

I need ideas, pros, cons, opinions. What would your approach be?

 

[Yozora]

Making the Table of Contents page for each course a "page" and then the individual lessons "posts" might be a possibility too. There's a way to display posts in chronological order, if you need it, and you can add a post between two posts by changing the date it was posted. Just adding a lesson to a table of contents might be easier though. Is the date these lessons are posted important for your target audience? Are there going to be people checking your site looking for new content, instead of going through lessons in order? Maybe you could add a separate link on the navigation menu titled something like "What's New" which lists the lessons from all courses. The main navigation menu links would probably be links to the table of contents page for each course though, like how Kahn Academy does it.

 

[pepedeticher]

I was considering a post ordering plugin, but the link you provided makes me reconsider. I'll give it a try.

Thanks, that was useful!

 

[Genesis]

@pepedeticher Suggest you check out the plugins that are featured at WordPress and Google them.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/

I also looked for a plugin for ordering posts and found one there - I can't remember which one that was but it was a good one. I find almost any plugin at the above URL for something you think of needing. But you must be careful too. You also need to check the plugin at Wordpress. They will tell you when you Google the plugin at the WordPress site when last the plugin was updated by the author. They also give the number of downloads of the plugin and that will be an indication how popularly it is used So that way you find out how active it is. They also have a feedback and question and answer section so you can check what the feedback is and the queries are. You may be able to pick up on whether there could be conflicts.

 

[GndZ3r0]

Here's how I would tackle this:

Pages - contains the main topic an as well as the post relating to the topic
P0st - contains specific info and vids

For example, I have two different pages talking about cat and dogs.

Cats (page)
- how to care for your cat (post)
- different breed of cats (post)
- body language of cats (post)

Dogs (page)
- how to care for your dog (post)
- different breed of dogs (post)
- to tie or not to tie, roam free dogs (post)

Tags would be unique labels so user can search the website for specifics, for example you'd use "care" and "cats" for how to care for your cat (post)