As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your website as a ‘blog’ and shows your most recent posts on the main page, unless you specify a page as the home page.
In another post, we also address how to create a WordPress blog page to show your latest published content.
Regardless of your choice to make blog posts on your front page or your blog page, With WordPress you can specify the number of posts to display on these pages (e.g. ’2’, ’5’, ’12’ etc.)
Your 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 WordPress website contains more blog posts than the number you have set to display …
Being able to specify the number of post items display on your WordPress site has a number of practical uses.
For example, you can display only the latest single blog post you have published. This is useful for example, if you promote a different time-sensitive offer each week, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of a local sports competition, post upcoming events, set up a quarterly social page for announcements, etc.
You can also use this great feature to fill an ugly space on your blog page if your sidebar menu is too long …
Whatever the reason, With WordPress you have the flexibility to specify the number of posts to show on your blog page.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to specify the number of blog post entries you want to show on your blog page.
Setting The Number Of Posts Displayed On Your WordPress Blog
WordPress allows you to choose how many published blog posts you want to show on the blog page of your site.
How many entries you want displayed is entirely 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 increase or decrease the number of items displayed.
To specify the number of blog posts you would like to have displaying on the blog page of your website, go to your WP navigation menu and click on Settings > Reading …
Configure your options in the Reading Settings page as shown below:
How To Specify The Number Of Posts Showing On Your Home Page
If you are using your WordPress site as a blog (i.e. the default installation option), where the home page shows your newest 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 blog post entries that you want showing – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ’10’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when done…
How To Modify The Number Of Posts Displayed On The Blog Page
If you are using your site as a website, where the home page is a fixed page and your latest post entries show up 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 post entries that you want to display – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished to update your settings …
Now, when visitors land on your site, they will see blog posts displayed 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 change the amount of published blog post entries you want to display on your WP site’s blog page.
Related Posts
If you are a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
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