As we’ve discussed in other posts, by default, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and shows your newest published entries on the front page, unless you fix a page as a front page.
In a previous post, we also show you how to create a blog page to show your most recent published posts.
Regardless of your choice to have posts on your front page or your blog page, With WordPress you can specify the number of items to show on these pages (e.g. ’2’, ’7’, ‘9’ etc.)
Your website will then display blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of items you have specified, even if your web site contains more blog posts than the number you have set to display …
Being able to set the number of post items display on your WordPress site has a number of practical uses.
For example, you can set your blog to display only the latest blog post that you have published. This is handy for example, if you promote a different limited-time offer each week, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of a local sports competition, post an upcoming event, set up a monthly social page for updates and announcements, etc.
You can also use this great feature to fill an empty 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 blog posts that will display on main blog page.
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to set how many blog post entries will show on your blog.
Specifying The Number Of Blog Posts Displayed On Your Blog Page
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress allows you to specify how many blog posts you want listed on the blog page of your web site.
How many entries you would like to display is completely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this number …
Note: Choose a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the content loads on your site. You can always increase or decrease the number of items displayed on your blog page.
To specify the number of published posts you would like to have displaying on the blog page site, choose Settings > Reading from the WordPress navigation menu …
Configure the options in the Reading Settings panel as shown in the screenshot below:
How To Change The Number Of Posts Displayed On The Front Page
If you are using your site as a blog (i.e. the default installation option), where the main page displays your most recent blog 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 items you want to display – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done to update your settings…
Editing The Number Of Posts Displayed On The Blog Page
If you are using your WP site as a website, where the home page is a fixed page and your most recent 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 blog posts that you want displayed – e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ’10’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished …
Now, when visitors come to your site, they will see blog post entries displayed either on your main 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 published posts you would like displayed on the blog page of your WP website.
Related Posts
If you are learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
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