As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your website as a ‘blog’ and displays your most recent published posts on the home page, unless you fix a page as a main page.
In another post, we also address how to create a WordPress blog page to display your most recent published entries.
Regardless of your choice to have display blog post entries on your front page or your blog page, you can specify the number of blog post entries to appear on these pages (e.g. ’2’, ’6’, ‘9’ etc.)
Your WP website will then display blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of items you have specified, even if your WordPress website contains more posts than the number of items you have set to display …
Being able to set the number of post items will display on your web site can be useful.
For example, you can set your blog to display only the most recent post you have published. This can be handy, if, for example, you want to send your readers to 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 social page for announcements, etc.
You can also use this feature to fill an ugly space on your blog if your sidebar menu is too long …
Whatever the reason, With WordPress you have the flexibility to set the number of posts to display on main blog page.
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to change how many blog posts you want to show up on your blog page.
Setting The Number Of Blog Post Entries To Display On Your WordPress Blog
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you specify how many published blog posts you want to have showing on the blog page.
How many posts you want displayed is entirely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this amount …
Note: Pick a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the entries load on your site. You can always raise or lower the number of posts displayed on your blog page.
To set the number of published blog post entries you want to have displaying on the blog page of your WordPress site, go to the WP dashboard menu and select Settings > Reading …
Configure your options in the Reading Settings panel as shown in the screenshot below:
Specifying The Number Of Posts Showing On The Main Page
If you are using your WP site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the front page shows your latest 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 post entries that you want to show – e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ’10’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished…
How To Change The Number Of Posts Showing On Your Blog Page
If you are using your site as a website, where the home page is a fixed page and your newest blog posts show up 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 posts you want to display – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done …
Now, when visitors come to your site, they will see posts displayed either on your home 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 number of posts you would like displayed on your site’s blog page.
Related Posts
If you are a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)