As we’ve discussed in previous posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and displays your latest published posts on the front page, unless you set a fixed page as your front page.
In another post, we also show you how to create a WordPress blog page to display your most recent published entries.
Whether you choose to make your most recent published articles on your home page or your blog page, you can set a specific number of posts to display on these pages (i.e. ‘1’, ’4’, ’15’ etc.)
Your website will then display blog post entries on your blog page up to the maximum number of posts you have specified, even if your WP website contains more blog posts than the number of posts you have set to display …
Having the ability to set how many posts display on your WordPress site has a number of practical uses.
For example, you can display only the most recent entry you have published. This is handy for example, if you are promoting a weekly special, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of a local sports competition, post upcoming events, set up a quarterly team page for announcements, etc.
You can also use this feature to fill an ugly space on your blog page if your sidebar menu runs too long …
Whatever the reason may be, WordPress gives you the flexibility to change the number of posts that you want to display on your blog page.
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to specify the number of blog posts will display on your WordPress blog.
Setting The Number Of Posts To Display On Your Blog
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you choose how many posts you would like to have showing on the blog page.
How many entries you want to display is completely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this amount …
Note: We recommend selecting a sensible setting that won’t slow down your page as the content loads on your site. You can always raise or lower the number of items displayed.
To specify how many blog posts you would like listed on your website’s blog page site, go to the WP admin menu and click on Settings > Reading …
Configure the options in the Reading Settings page as shown in the screenshot below:
How To Modify The Number Of Posts On Your Main Page
If you are using your site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the home page displays your latest posts, then edit your settings 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 items you want displayed – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished…
Modifying The Number Of Posts On The Blog Page
If you are using your WP site as a website, where the main page shows a fixed page and your newest blog posts display on a separate blog page, then edit your settings 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 posts you want displayed – e.g. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished …
Now, when visitors come to your website, they will see blog posts 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 change the number of published blog posts you want to show on your website’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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