As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and shows your newest blog posts on the front page, unless you specify a page as the home page.
In a separate tutorial, we have also addressed how to create a blog page to show your latest published posts.
Regardless of your choice to make blog posts on your front page or your blog page, With WordPress you can set a specific number of items to appear on these pages (i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘9’ etc.)
Your website will then display your most recently published articles on your blog page up to the maximum number of blog post entries you have specified, even if your WP website or blog contains more blog posts than the number of posts you have set to display …
The ability to set how many blog post items will display on your WordPress site has a number of uses.
For example, you can display only the latest post you have published. This is handy for example, if you are promoting 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 monthly office page for announcements, etc.
You can also use this feature to fill an ugly space on your blog page if your sidebar menu is too long …
Whatever the reason may be, With WordPress you have the flexibility to specify the number of blog posts that you want to display on your blog page.
Let’s show you, then, how easy it is to specify how many posts you want to display on your blog.
Specifying The Number Of Blog Post Entries To Display On Your WordPress Blog Page
Through its content management system (CMS), WordPress lets you specify how many published blog post entries you want listed on the blog page of your website.
The number of posts you want displayed is entirely up to you. WordPress doesn’t limit this number …
Note: Choose a sensible setting that won’t overload your page as the entries load on your site. You can always increase or decrease the number of items displayed on your blog page.
To set how many published blog posts you want displayed on the blog page of your site, click on Settings > Reading from the WordPress dashboard menu …
Configure your options in the Reading Settings screen as per the screenshot below:
Changing The Number Of Posts Displayed 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 post entries, 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 posts that you want to show – e.g. ‘1’, ‘3’, ‘7’, ’15’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done…
Modifying The Number Of Posts Displayed On Your Blog Page
If you are using your site as a website, where the main page shows 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 blog post entries that you want to show – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
- Click on Save Changes when done …
Now, when visitors come to your site, they will see your most recent published articles showing 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 change the amount of published posts you would like to show on the blog page of your WordPress website.
Related Posts
If you are new to WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
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