As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your website as a ‘blog’ and shows your newest post entries on the main page, unless you set a specific page as a home page.
In a separate post, we also show you how to create a WordPress blog page to display your most recent published articles.
Regardless of your choice to make blog posts on your main page or your blog page, WordPress lets you specify the number of published blog posts to show on these pages (i.e. ’2’, ’5’, ’10’ etc.)
Your website will then display blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of items you have specified, even if your website contains more blog posts than the number of posts you have set to display …
Being able to specify how many blog post items will display on your web site has a number of practical applications.
For example, you can set your blog to display only the most recent post item you have published. This can be useful, if, for example, you promote a weekly special, a ’book of the month’ type of offer, publish the latest results of a local sports competition, post upcoming events, set up a quarterly social page for updates and announcements, etc.
You can also use this feature to fill an empty space on your blog if your sidebar menu runs too long …
Whatever the reason may be, WordPress gives you the flexibility to change the number of posts that will display on your blog page.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to easily set how many blog post entries you want to show on your site’s blog page.
How To Change The Number Of Blog Posts To Display On Your Blog Page
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you choose how many posts you want displayed on the blog page of your web site.
How many posts you want displayed is completely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this amount …
Note: Select a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the entries load on your site. You can always increase or decrease the amount of posts displayed.
To set the number of blog posts you want to show on your website’s blog page website, go to your WordPress admin menu and choose Settings > Reading …
Configure the settings in the Reading Settings panel as per the screenshot below:
Editing The Number Of Posts Showing On The Front Page
If you are using your WP site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the front page displays your latest blog posts, then edit your settings as described below:
- Front page displays: Set this to Your latest posts
- Blog pages show at most: X posts (where ‘X’ is the number of items you want displayed – e.g. ‘1’, ‘3’, ’10’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when done…
How To Edit The Number Of Posts Showing On Your Blog Page
If you are using your site as a website, where the main page is a fixed page and your most recent posts display on a separate blog page, then set your options as shown 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 blog post items that you want to show – e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ’10’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done …
Now, when visitors land on your website, they will see recently published post entries showing either on your front 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 your site’s blog page.
Related Posts
If you are learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now