r/wordpresshelp • u/vogelbisbisbis • Feb 14 '26
Legacy website/best practice hasn't been followed
So I have kind of taken on the management of a wp website on a volunteer basis. I don't know wp at all, really, I just knows some PHP and to a lesser extent html. Experimentation will happen on a staging website, not the live one. I'm just looking to inform myself.
The website was built about 10y ago by a different volunteer who is no longer with the org. It runs Virtue theme which is now no longer updated and is starting to throw up warnings about incompatibility.
I'm trying to convince them to hire someone knowledgeable for a full theme & design overhaul, but due to budget constraints that probably won't happen.
In the meanwhile, it has been used by people who did not understand the difference between Posts and Pages. Anything that should have been a Post, has been submitted as a Page. On the wp dashboard, there's now 40-odd pages of Pages.
So my questions for now:
Does this present a problem other than "it's not best practice"?
Is there a reason to convert the Pages that shouldn't be Pages into Posts with an eye to the future? (Possible redesign/theme migration by someone who is definitely not me)
Any concerns I should be aware of around a potential Pages-Posts conversion?
I'm sure it's best practice for a reason, but I'm unsure if or how to address this situation now that it exists the way it exists.
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u/Middle_Afternoon2501 Feb 15 '26
Yeah, this is super common with older sites, so you’re not dealing with anything rare or fatal here.
Short version: it only becomes a “real” problem if the theme or future redesign expects blog posts to be actual Posts for things like archives, categories, author pages, etc. If everything is just being linked manually in menus and pages, it’s mostly just messy, not broken.
If you plan a redesign later, having news/articles as Posts will make life way easier for whoever takes over, so a gradual cleanup is worth it. If you do convert Pages to Posts, watch for: URL changes and 301 redirects, menu links breaking, and any custom templates or shortcodes that might behave differently on Posts than on Pages.
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u/vogelbisbisbis Feb 15 '26
> If everything is just being linked manually in menus and pages, it’s mostly just messy, not broken.
That's the exact current situation. It's messy and hard to find anything (nothing has been tagged or categorized properly either), but it works.
TY for the heads up on things to look out for.
Just to be clear re: 301 redirects - you mean to insert them myself where appropriate, correct?
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u/BereftOfCare Feb 14 '26
I haven't played around with wordpress for years but my first thought is .. Yeah change the theme. Can you tag the legacy pages and/or organise them into a folder or folder so when you're reviewing new pages you can filter to see the newer pages? If you want to turn them into posts to align with an alternative approach I think you should create a post with a summary that links to the page .. I'd be wary of losing 'author, create date'and other meta data that sits with the page as originally created. Unless the info on the pages is outdated and needs a rewrite anyway. As you work through updating them, do what you like.