Linking to channel via structure section I apologize for opening up a whole new question for this topic since it's been discussed a few times now, however I don't have enough rep yet to comment on the existing questions.

Regarding the answer to this question:

Channel index page linked in a structure

So what this answer is saying is that instead of having a whole separate channel for say, a blog, I should have it set up so that "Blog" is an entry type in my larger structure that also contains the various static pages for my site? if I'm understanding that correctly, doesn't the user lose out on some of the basic feature that a separate channel offers, such as not having to choose where in the structure hierarchy a new blog post should be?
I don't think that carlcs was suggesting that you incorporate individual blog posts into the 'pages' structure. He was only suggesting that you place those pages into the structure that you would want in your main navigation (using different entryTypes defined for each page layout); like your blog index page for example. In your case, what you would likely want to do (assuming you are following this strategy at all), is to create an entry for 'blog' in your structure, with a unique entryType called 'blogIndex' for example, and a matching template called '_blog.html' or '_blog.twig' which will be your blog landing/index page.

You would then create a channel for your individual blog entries, also called 'blog'.

In this way the urls will sync up nicely, such that the uri '/blog' will display your structure entry (which is designed to render, for example, a summary of the first 20 blog entries from your 'blog' channel); and the uri '/blog/my-blog-entry-title' will display your blog entry detail page from your 'blog' channel (assuming the blog entries are long enough that you even need a detail page).

Check out this answer for a more specific example with code examples.