What is the difference between a page, listing and asset?

All content is displayed using normal channel tags, but depending on the content type you can use different Structure page types to accomplish your hierarchy. Structure believes everything on your site should be editable through a single interface, so we provide several page type to manipulate your content within.

Pages

Pages are generally what are referred to as “static pages”, but can be posted anywhere in your hierarchy to any channel you choose. This means they can use any custom fields as well to tailor your content as needed. Pages show up in Structure navigation tags and the main CP site tree. Pages are also containers for listings.

Listings

Listings must be attached to a page and connect to a channel to enable easy adding and editing. Listing entries do not show up in the structure hierarchy, but still have URLs and Structure data posted to them. Listings are generally used for content that appears on a single page and clicks through to a detail – like a listing of news, blog posts, etc. However, they can be used to display multiple entries on a single page, since all content is still shown through channel tags. When something consists of multiple entries and does not need to appear within the site navigation, listings are a great solution.

Assets

Assets do not contain Structure data or page URLS and are meant as buckets of information that will be called into other templates and sections. For example: banner ads, snippets of text used in callouts and entries that will be related to pages. Assets are normal entries, so they can still be called through the regular templating system as needed.