What you will accomplish in this step
- Understand the difference between a page and a post.
- Know when to use each type of content according to your goal.
- Organise your website’s structure correctly.
- Know where to create a page and a post.
- Understand what categories and tags are, and the role they play in posts.
From appearance to content structure
In the previous step, you chose the theme you will work with. Your website therefore already has a visual foundation. Now it is time to deal with what it contains: the way WordPress organises the content you will publish.
It is worth explaining now what this step is for. In this journey, you will not create the pages one by one: artificial intelligence will build them from the site plan you provide. To give it that plan, you need to understand what a page is, what a post is and when to use each format. That is the purpose of this step.
What is the difference between a page and a post?
A page and a post are edited with the same tools and can contain the same elements: text, images, videos and buttons. The difference is not what you can publish, but the place that content occupies within your website.
Definition
A page is a fixed section of your website: Home, Services or Contact. It belongs to the structure you define. A post is a dated publication, generally published in the blog, that joins the previous ones to form a stream.
Page
It forms part of the structure you have defined for your website.
Post
It forms part of a stream of publications arranged by date.
Here is a quick way to avoid confusion: if your visitor would look for this content in the menu, it is a page. If you publish this content today and plan to publish another item of the same type next week, it is a blog post.
Pages: your website’s structure
Pages are the different sections of your website. Some are standard: Home, Services or Training, About, Contact. Others can form a guide or a journey, like the one you are following now. They generally appear in the main menu and correspond to the information your visitor expects to always find in the same place.
How to organise pages: parent and child
As a website grows, its pages are organised across several levels. A parent page represents a main section. A child page depends on that page and develops a more specific topic.
That is the structure of this journey: the page you are reading is a child page of “Build a WordPress Website with AI”, and that parent page has ten child pages, one for each step. You can see this in the path shown at the top, in the breadcrumbs, as well as in this page’s address, which depends on its parent page’s address.
This hierarchy does three things for you: it groups related content, keeps addresses organised and clearly shows visitors where they are. It also prevents the usual problem of websites that grow without a plan: twenty independent pages at the same level, with nobody knowing which ones belong together.
What you will tell the AI
This is the main reason for this step. When you build your website with AI, one part of the instruction document will address precisely this point: the page plan, its list of pages and the relationships between them. The plan for a service-based business website can be as simple as this:
Site map
Home · Services · About · Contact · Blog
Services → Service A · Service B
With this information, artificial intelligence knows which pages to create, how they are connected and which ones should appear in the menu. You do not need any more detail for now: you will learn how to write the entire document during that step of the journey.
How do you create a page in WordPress?
Now that you know what a page is and how it is used on a website, let us see how to create one in WordPress.
To create a new page:
- Open the left-hand menu.
- Click Pages → Add New Page.
- Enter a title for your page.
We will not explore the design in depth yet. In the next steps, you will work on pages with the WordPress block editor, which is the tool used to build the content itself.
Posts: what you publish over time
Posts are used to publish content regularly: blog articles, news, tutorials and updates. Each one has a date and WordPress displays them in the blog from newest to oldest.
On a website about healthy cooking, here are a few examples of posts:
- How to prepare healthy breakfasts in under 10 minutes
- List of recommended foods for improving your energy
- Common mistakes when you start following a balanced diet
Each post answers a specific question from your reader. Over time, they form a library that explores your project’s topics in depth and, if they answer what your audience is actually looking for, attract visitors from search engines.
Do you need a blog from day one?
No. A service website can be launched with pages only, then add a blog when you have content to publish regularly. However, you should make this decision now and include it in the plan: if a blog is planned, the AI will prepare it from the start.
Categories and tags: how to organise posts
Posts are not organised as parents and children. They are classified using two tools that you should distinguish clearly:
- Categories. The main topics of your blog. Each post belongs to one or a few categories. Categories can contain subcategories.
- Tags. Specific characteristics that may relate to several topics. A post can have several tags, which are not hierarchical.
Example for a cooking website:
Categories
- Recipes
- Cooking tips
- Basic techniques
Tags
- oven
- 15 minutes
- beginners
- gluten-free
You do not need to create many tags at the beginning. In most cases, a good category structure is enough to keep your content well organised.
How do you create a post in WordPress?
To create a new post:
- Open the left-hand menu.
- Click Posts → Add New Post.
- Enter a title for your post.
As with pages, we will not explore this process further for now.
In the next steps, you will learn how to create and structure your content with the block editor.
How to create a category and a tag
Now that you understand how posts are organised, let us see where to create categories and tags in the WordPress dashboard.
How do you create a category in WordPress?
To create a new category, follow these steps:
- Open the left-hand menu.
- Click Posts → Categories.
When you create a category, the following fields are available:
- Name: the category name.
- Slug: the text that will appear in the URL. It should be written in lowercase, with hyphens instead of spaces.
- Parent category (optional): allows you to create a subcategory within another category.
- Description (optional): a short explanation of the category’s content.
Then click Add New Category.
You do not need to create many categories when you are starting out. It is better to begin with a few clear categories and add more only when necessary.
How do you set a default category?
When you create a new post in WordPress, you can assign it to one or more categories.
You can also define a default category. It will be selected automatically when you create new posts, which can be useful if most of your publications concern the same topic.
This also prevents WordPress from using the “Uncategorized” category when a post is published without a specific category.
🚨 Although this setting is generally unnecessary at the beginning, we wanted to show you where it is so that you understand how it works. Later, when you publish content regularly, you can decide whether using a default category is useful for you.
How do you configure it step by step?
- Open the left-hand menu.
- Click Settings → Writing.
- Find the Default Post Category option.
- Select the category you want to use by default.
- Save the changes.
This setting is optional, but it can help you publish more quickly if you often use the same category on your website.
How do you create tags in WordPress?
Creating tags is very similar to creating categories.
- Open the left-hand menu.
- Click Posts → Tags.
- In the “Add New Tag” panel, complete the fields.
- Click Add New Tag.
Next step
In this step, you discovered the two main WordPress content types: pages and posts. You know when to use each one, how to organise them and which plan you will give to artificial intelligence when it is time to build your website.
You now understand the content structure within the second phase of creating your website.
In the next step, you will discover the tool you will use to build everything. You will learn how to use the WordPress block editor: what a block is, how blocks stack, how to move them and how to edit them. This is the step that will give you the independence to edit your website without depending on anyone.
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4. Choose a WordPress Theme
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5. Pages and Posts
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