SharePoint Online - When to use an Article page vs Welcome page vs Page in a Publishing site?

Question

I am new to using Publishing Site template, so trying to figure out difference between Article Page, Welcome Page and Page and when to use what. I did read a few articles but none provided a detailed description.

If some one can provide a detailed description. I will be very thankful.

Answer 1

Basically these 3 different type of pages has different page layout. So based on your requirement you can choose one...

Article page - Because of it’s WYSIWYG in-page editing capabilities, this is ideal candidate for end-users to create and manage contents on their team sites in more flexible manner where content presentation and standardization of layouts is less important. It provides blog/articles kind of page, so that end user can create page by using Rich Text editor functionality, like copy paste format of word document in to page, (they don't need to know html). Or they can directly use controls to format text available in Ribbon.

Page - or webpart page - Web part pages were ideal choice for us to allow different content owners to add content in more controlled manner. It has different webpart zone so that you can add resuable webparts but in a very structured way.... User with edit capabilities cannot add content outside of webpart zone....

Welcome Page - More of kind of normal Page but it comes with some default webpart added to it, and based on the site template this webparts will change. You can always edit welcome page and add/modify webpart inside it.