As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your website as a ‘blog’ and displays your most recent published content on the main page, unless you specify a page as a main page.
In a separate post, we also discussed how to create a blog page to display your latest post.
Regardless of your choice to have your blog posts on your main page or your blog page, WordPress lets you specify the number of blog post entries to show up on these pages (e.g. ‘1’, ’5’, ’15’ etc.)
Your site will then display your blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of blog post entries you have set, even if your WordPress website or blog contains more blog posts than the number of posts you have set to display …
The ability to specify how many posts can display on your WordPress site can be very useful.
For example, you can display only the latest single post you have published. This can be useful for example, if you want to send your readers to a weekly special, a ‘deal of the day’ type of offer, publish the latest results of your sports team, post an upcoming event, set up a quarterly corporate page for announcements, etc.
Or, you can use this feature to fill an ugly space on your blog if your sidebar menu is too long …
Whatever the reason, WordPress gives you the flexibility to change the number of posts that you want to show on your blog page.
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how easy it is to specify how many blog post entries you want to display on your blog.
Specifying The Number Of Blog Post Entries Displayed On Your WordPress Blog Page
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you specify how many posts you would like to display on your blog page.
How many blog posts you would like to display is entirely up to you. there is no limit to this amount …
Note: We recommend choosing a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the entries load on your site. You can always raise or lower the amount of items displayed on your blog page.
To specify the number of posts you want to show on the blog page of your web site, go to your WP dashboard menu and choose Settings > Reading …
Configure the settings in the Reading Settings section as per the screenshot below:
How To Specify The Number Of Posts Showing On The Main Page
If you are using your site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the home page displays your latest posts, then edit your settings 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 blog post items you want to show – e.g. ‘1’, ‘3’, ’10’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done…
How To Change The Number Of Posts Displayed On The Blog Page
If you are using your site as a website, where the front page is a fixed page and your most recent post entries 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 post items that you want to display – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when finished …
Now, when visitors come to your website, they will see your most recent published articles 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 change the number of published posts you want listed on the blog page of your WP web site.
Related Posts
If you are new to WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related 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