As we’ve discussed in other posts, in a default installation, WordPress treats your site as a ‘blog’ and displays your latest blog posts on the home page, unless you fix a page as a static main page.

In a previous article, we’ve also explained how to create a blog page to show your latest post.

Regardless of your choice to make posts on your home page or your blog page, you can specify the number of items to show up on these pages (e.g. ’2’, ’5’, ’10’ etc.)

Your WP site will then display blog posts on your blog page up to the maximum number of items you have specified, even if your site contains more blog posts than the number set to display …

Being able to set how many blog post items will display on your blog page can be useful.

For example, you can set your blog to display only the most recent blog post you have published. This can be handy for example, if you want to promote a different time-sensitive offer each week, a ’book of the month’ type of offer, publish the latest results of your sports team, post an upcoming event, set up a weekly social page for announcements, etc.

Or, you can use this great 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 set the number of blog posts that will show on your blog page.

In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to specify the number of posts to display on your WordPress blog.

How To Specify The Number Of Blog Posts To Display On Your Blog

WordPress allows you to specify how many published blog posts you would like listed on the blog page of your website.

Tip

The number of entries you would like to display is entirely up to you. there is no limit to this number …

Note: We suggest that you choose a sensible setting that won’t slow down your page as the entries load on your site. You can always raise or lower the number of items displayed.

To set how many blog posts you would like displayed on the blog page site, click on Settings > Reading from your WP dashboard menu …

Configure the options in the Reading Settings page as per the screenshot below:

Editing The Number Of Posts Showing On Your Front Page

If you are using your WP site as a blog (i.e. the default WordPress option), where the main page shows your most recent published 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 posts that you want showing – i.e. ‘1’, ‘3’, ’10’, ’12’ etc.)
Click the ‘Save’ button when finished…

Specifying The Number Of Posts Displayed On Your Blog Page

If you are using your WordPress site as a website, where the main page is a fixed page and your most recent published blog 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 post entries you want to display – i.e. ‘1’, ’5’, ‘7’, ’12’ etc.)
Click the Save Changes button when finished …

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:

How To Use WordPress Post Excerpts And Post Previews

Congratulations! Now you know how to change the number of published posts you would like listed on your WordPress site’s blog page.

If you are new to WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:

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