As we’ve discussed in other posts, by default, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and displays your most recent published content on the home page, unless you set a fixed page as the front page.
In a previously published post, we also show you how to create a WordPress blog page to show your most recent blog post entries.
Regardless of your choice to have your most recent published articles on your home page or your blog page, WordPress lets you specify the number of items to display on these pages (i.e. ’2’, ’4’, ‘9’ etc.)
Your WordPress site will then display your most recently published articles on your blog page up to the maximum number of blog posts you have set, even if your web site contains more blog posts than the number of items you have set to display …
Being able to set how many post items can display on your web site has a number of uses.
For example, you can display only the latest entry that you have published. This is useful, if, for example, you are promoting a weekly special, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of a local sports competition, post an upcoming event, set up a quarterly community page for updates and announcements, etc.
Or, you can use this great feature to fill an empty space on your blog if your sidebar menu runs too long …
Whatever the reason, WordPress gives you the flexibility to specify the number of posts to display on main blog page.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to easily specify how many posts to show on your blog page.
How To Change The Number Of Post Entries To Display On Your WordPress Blog
WordPress allows you to choose how many blog posts you want to have showing on your blog page.
The number of blog posts you would like to display is entirely up to you. there is no limit to this number …
Note: We recommend choosing a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the content loads on your site. You can always raise or lower the amount of posts displayed.
To set how many published blog posts you would like to have displaying on the blog page site, go to your WP navigation menu and choose Settings > Reading …
Configure the settings in the Reading Settings screen as shown in the screenshot below:
How To Change The Number Of Posts On Your Main Page
If you are using your WP site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the home page displays your newest post entries, then set your options as shown below:
- Front page displays: Set this to Your latest posts
- Blog pages show at most: X posts (where ‘X’ is the number of post entries that you want to show – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished…
How To Specify The Number Of Posts On Your Blog Page
If you are using your WP site as a website, where the main page displays a fixed page and your latest post entries display on a separate blog page, then set your options as described below:
- Front page displays: Set this to A static page, then select Posts page: > your Blog Page from the drop down menu
- Blog pages show at most: X posts X posts (where ‘X’ is the number of post items that you want displayed – e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when done …
Now, when visitors come to your site, they will see blog post entries showing either on your main page or blog page, up to the maximum number of posts you have specified …
To learn how to change the length of your post excerpts, see the tutorial below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to set the amount of blog post entries you want to have showing on the blog page of your website.
Related Posts
If you are new to WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
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