Feb 18, 2025 · WordPress
Getting started with WordPress: concepts I wish I'd learned sooner
Notes from my first days with WordPress: posts vs pages, themes vs plugins, categories vs tags, permalinks and user roles — the basics that save a lot of confusion when you start.
When I started working with WordPress at Puramu, I once spent an afternoon working out why something should be a "page" rather than a "post", or why my theme edits vanished after an update. These are the concepts I wish I'd understood from the start.
Posts and pages
- Posts: dated content in categories, shown in time order — news, blog.
- Pages: "static" content — About, Contact, Services. No categories; can have parent/child pages.
Simple rule: regularly published, topic-filtered content → post; fixed menu pages → page.
Categories and tags
- Categories are the main table of contents, can be nested; each post should have one main category.
- Tags are secondary keywords. Don't create hundreds of one-off tags — each makes a thin archive page.
Themes and plugins
- Themes control appearance.
- Plugins add features: forms, SEO, caching, e-commerce.
A lesson learned after "losing code" a few times: features don't belong in the theme. Change themes and the look changes, but features (like a "Projects" content type) should remain — put them in a plugin.
Never edit the parent theme
Edits to a bought or official theme are overwritten by the next update. Use a child theme (I wrote a separate post about it).
Permalinks
Go to Settings → Permalinks and choose "Post name" for URLs like /choosing-hosting/. Do it on day one — changing later means mass redirects.
User roles
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Everything, including plugins |
| Editor | Publish and edit everyone's posts |
| Author | Publish and edit own posts |
| Contributor | Write but not publish |
Clients who only write content need Editor — far less risky than Administrator.
The block editor
Gutenberg builds content from blocks: paragraphs, images, columns, buttons. It felt overwhelming at first, but it's much faster and cleaner than pasting HTML.
Advice for beginners
- Install a local test site (LocalWP) and break it freely to learn.
- Read the official docs at developer.wordpress.org, not just short videos.
- Before every plugin, ask: do I really need it?