As we’ve discussed in previous posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and displays your newest posts on the home page, unless you specify a page as a static front page.
In a previously published tutorial, we have also addressed how to create a blog page to show your most recent post.
Regardless of your choice to have blog post entries on your home page or your blog page, you can set a specific number of blog post entries to appear on these pages (e.g. ‘1’, ’7’, ’12’ etc.)
Your WordPress website will then display your most recently published post entries on your blog page up to the maximum number of items you have set, even if your website contains more posts than the number of posts you have set to display …
Being able to specify the number of blog post items display on your site has a number of uses.
For example, you can display only the most recent post that you have published. This is handy, if, for example, you are promoting a different time-sensitive offer each week, a ’book of the month’ type of offer, publish the latest results of your sports team, post upcoming events, set up a monthly team page for updates and announcements, etc.
You can also use this great 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 specify the number of posts that you want to display on your blog page.
Let’s show you, then, how to easily specify the number of blog post entries to display on your WordPress blog.
How To Specify The Number Of Blog Post Entries Displayed On Your Blog Page
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you choose how many published blog posts you want to have showing on the blog page.
The number of blog posts you want to display is completely up to you. there is no limit to this number …
Note: Select a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the content loads on your site. You can always increase or decrease the amount of posts displayed on your blog page.
To set how many published blog post entries you want displayed on the blog page website, go to the WP navigation menu and choose Settings > Reading …
Configure the settings in the Reading Settings page as shown in the screenshot below:
How To Edit The Number Of Posts Showing On Your Main Page
If you are using your WP site as a blog (i.e. the default installation option), where the home page displays your most recent blog posts, then set your options 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 entries that you want displayed – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when done…
Specifying The Number Of Posts Showing 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 posts display on a separate blog page, then edit your settings 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 items that you want showing – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ’10’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when done …
Now, when visitors come to your website, they will see blog posts displayed either on your home page or blog page, as per the settings 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 would like displayed on the blog page of your web site.
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