<p>Ordering and Hierarchy are the main benefits but they create a couple of side benefits such as the ability to</p>

<ul>
<li>get the "children" and "parents" of an entry</li>
<li>get siblings including next and previous siblings</li>
</ul>

<p>The best part is there no real downside, they have all the features and functions of a regular channel PLUS the structure.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-07T18:37:33.290Z
Also worth noting: You can always convert a Channel into a Structure or vice versa, without loosing field-data.
Victor
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-07T19:47:28.600Z
The only downside of a structure over a channel is that there is overhead associated with keeping track of all that extra information (hierarchy, ordering, etc.).  If you don't *need* the features of a structure, then a channel is much more efficient.
Brad Bell
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-04-25T10:27:59.100Z
"much more efficient" - how much so? What sort of performance impact are we talking here?
Matt Wilcox
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-10-28T14:33:12.917Z
I see no one replied to that for years, but I'll chime in: it's more efficient on large websites to use channels instead of structure because mysql has to make extra queries and fetch extra data to generate pagination (prev entry, next entry, count entries to generate number of pages, etc.). You can see a similar performance problem with WordPress (if you don't use pagination, you can declare an option called "no_found_rows" that removes those extra queries). On a smaller database, it's not much noticeable though, so take with a grain of salt.
davidwebca
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-07T18:19:17.647Z
2014-09-07T18:19:17.647Z
Keith Mancuso
<p>Structures look interesting because you can reorder entries manually, generate breadcrumbs and visually see a hierarchy of entries. Besides this, what are the primary consideration when choosing a Structure over a Channel?</p>

<structure>
When to choose a Structure over a Channel?
# When to choose a Structure over a Channel?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-09-07)

Structures look interesting because you can reorder entries manually, generate breadcrumbs and visually see a hierarchy of entries. Besides this, what are the primary consideration when choosing a Structure over a Channel?

**Tags:** structure

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-09-07. Score: 10 | Accepted answer

Ordering and Hierarchy are the main benefits but they create a couple of side benefits such as the ability to

* get the "children" and "parents" of an entry
* get siblings including next and previous siblings

The best part is there no real downside, they have all the features and functions of a regular channel PLUS the structure.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Also worth noting: You can always convert a Channel into a Structure or vice versa, without loosing field-data.  
> **username_3**: The only downside of a structure over a channel is that there is overhead associated with keeping track of all that extra information (hierarchy, ordering, etc.).  If you don't *need* the features of a structure, then a channel is much more efficient.  
> **username_4**: "much more efficient" - how much so? What sort of performance impact are we talking here?  
> **username_5**: I see no one replied to that for years, but I'll chime in: it's more efficient on large websites to use channels instead of structure because mysql has to make extra queries and fetch extra data to generate pagination (prev entry, next entry, count entries to generate number of pages, etc.). You can see a similar performance problem with WordPress (if you don't use pagination, you can declare an option called "no_found_rows" that removes those extra queries). On a smaller database, it's not much noticeable though, so take with a grain of salt.  

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