As we’ve discussed in previous posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your website as a ‘blog’ and displays your most recent posts on the front page, unless you set a fixed page as your home page.
In another tutorial, we also address how to create a WordPress blog page to show your most recent blog posts.
Regardless of your choice to make blog posts on your home page or your blog page, WordPress lets you specify the number of blog posts to show up on these pages (i.e. ‘1’, ’7’, ‘9’ etc.)
Your site will then display your newest blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of posts you have set, even if your WordPress website or blog contains more blog posts than the number of items you have set to display …
Being able to specify how many entries display on your web site is useful.
For example, you can set your blog to display only the latest single blog post that you have published. This can be useful, if, for example, you promote a weekly special, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of your sports team, post upcoming events, set up a quarterly office page for announcements, etc.
Or, you can use this great feature to fill an ugly space on your blog page if your sidebar menu runs too long …
Whatever the reason, WordPress gives you the flexibility to change the number of blog posts that will display on main blog page.
Let’s show you, then, how to set the number of posts will show up on your WordPress blog.
Specifying The Number Of Post Entries To Display On Your Blog
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress allows you to choose how many published blog posts you would like to have showing on the blog page.
How many entries you would like to display is completely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this amount …
Note: Choose a sensible setting that won’t slow down 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 specify how many posts you would like to display on the blog page of your WordPress website, go to the WordPress navigation menu and click on Settings > Reading …
Configure your options in the Reading Settings panel as shown in the screenshot below:
How To Specify The Number Of Posts Showing On The Home Page
If you are using your site as a blog (i.e. the default installation option), where the home page displays your newest published blog post entries, then set your options 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 entries that you want displayed – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ’10’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished…
Specifying The Number Of Posts On Your Blog Page
If you are using your WP site as a website, where the front page shows a fixed page and your latest posts show up on a separate blog page, then set your options 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 items that you want displayed – e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ’10’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click the Save Changes button when finished …
Now, when visitors come to your website, they will see blog posts displayed either on your front 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 change the number of blog posts you would like 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 topic-related posts useful:
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