Posts And Pages In Oxygen

First let me say that the way I do things is not necessarily the way everyone else does them. For example, some people think posts are the spawn of the devil and so build all their WordPress sites using only pages. I think this stems from a belief that posts and pages are fundamentally different from one another, in a bad way.

When Building Web Pages In Oxygen, You Always Have Two Options

In Oxygen, each time you add a new page or post to your site, you must also decide how that post or page will be created. You will always have two choices.

Use Gutenberg And Oxygen

• create the post or page content in Gutenberg, and
• create the layout in Oxygen, or

Use Only Oxygen

• create the post or page content in Oxygen and
• create the layout in Oxygen

Using Gutenberg On WordPress

I always create post content in Gutenberg. However, I deliberately use only the simplest blocks. I use Gutenberg blocks to place simple stuff like the following,

• headings,
• paragraphs,
• images,
• quotes and
• videos.

That's about it. I'm not interested in any third party block libraries nor in any complex blocks. I might use the occasional column or table. But in general I like to keep my Gutenberg block use extremely simple.

• all of my Gutenberg post content is simple. No. fancy. layouts.
• no use whatsoever of third party blocks as they all have their own idiosyncrasies, their own default styling, are often buggy, and are too limited to be of any use out of the box.

The Gutenberg content will then be sucked out into an Oxygen template - which will effectively frame the content.

When To Use WordPress Posts

I think it's best to put informational and educational content inside WordPress posts. In other words put all of your most important topic-related information inside posts. So content that is informational, educational, for content marketing and for SEO should be placed inside posts.

The purpose of post content is to educate, to help your audience, and to rank in search engines for terms you hope your audience are typing. Post content is there to build traffic.

For posts, I like to use Option 1 above. This means I create the content in Gutenberg, and the layout in Oxygen.

When To Use WordPress Pages

Use WordPress Pages For Standard Web Content

I use WordPress pages to build standard web pages like About, Terms, Contact, Cookies, Disclosure and Privacy pages. I also use WordPress pages to build Landing Pages.

For these standard pages I use Option 1 above. This means I create the content in Gutenberg, and the layout in Oxygen.

Use WordPress Pages For Landing Pages

Landing Pages are special pages on a site like the home page, and any page where you might be directing people to go to take some sort of action. The action might be, for example, to sign up to something, to buy something or to download something.

Landing Pages do not tend to do very well if they are not bursting with arrows or other pointed attempts to direct the user's eye. On landing pages, use catchy and noticeable headings to get people to do what you want them to do. Landing Pages are almost the opposite to content pages. They are not there to rank for anything, they are there to convert.

To this end, using standard headings like the ones that are used on the informational blog posts, or the same sized text - as used on all the content pages - may not be suitable. You'll need to keep more or less within the tramlines of your design regarding use of colour, but you can also go a little off-piste to make the landing pages more noticeable to the human eye, and therefore more likely to convert.

Landing pages need to look like you put some effort into them.

So for this type of page I often don't simply siphon the content out of Gutenberg into an Oxygen template. For lander pages I will do the content and the design in Oxygen. Why? Because it is easy to make fancy, eye-catching pages in Oxygen.

For landing pages I like to use Option 2 above. This means I create both the content and the layout in Oxygen.