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How to Change the Number of Posts Displayed On Your WordPress Blog Page

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Do you want to change the number of posts displayed on your WordPress blog page?

By default, all WordPress archive pages show a maximum of 10 posts per page. However, you can change them easily from your dashboard settings and show as many articles as you like.

In this article, we will show you how to easily change the number of posts displayed on your WordPress blog page in just 2 simple steps.

Change the Number of Posts Displayed on Your WordPress Blog Page

Video Tutorial

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If you prefer written instructions, just keep reading.

Changing the Number of Posts on a Blog Page

The first thing you need to do is log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to the Settings » Reading page.

Next, you need to change the value of the ‘Blog pages show at most’ option to the number of posts you want to display on your WordPress website’s blog page.

By default, WordPress will set this number to 10. You can go ahead and increase or decrease the number of posts you’d like to display on your blog page.

Change Number of Posts on Your Blog Page in WordPress

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.

Now, your WordPress blog and archive pages will show the number of posts that you want to display.

How Many Posts Should I Display on My Blog Page?

Usually, bloggers display 10 posts per page, as set by default. It is an appropriate number to show from the user experience and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective.

You can display as many posts as you like, but we do not recommend choosing a number higher than 10, especially when you are not showing excerpts.

This is mainly because the more posts you display on a page, the bigger the page size will be, which makes it slower to load. As a result, your page load times will increase, which can have a negative impact on your site’s rankings.

On WPBeginner’s Blog and Archive pages, we show 10 posts with an excerpt and the featured image. This makes it easier for our users to browse the archives quickly, and it offers a better user experience.

WPBeginner blog page

We hope this article helped you change the number of posts displayed on your blog page. You may also want to see our guide on the best design software and how to get a free email domain.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

81 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

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  2. Krika says

    Hi, how can I place only one – most recent – post on homepage, but have 10 posts per page on my blog page?
    If I change ‘Blog pages show at most’, it changes both – my front page and my blog page.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      You would need to reach out to your theme’s support for customizing that as it sounds like you are using your home page as your blog as well.

      Admin

  3. Sourov Biswas says

    man……… i was looking for this almost 3 days, i edited the theme file 100 times to do this. sometime we should think simple.

    thank you, i have no words

  4. Stephanie A says

    I do not know why on my wordpress dashboard, I list it as showing 3 blog pages for homepage but when I go to my website, it has 4 blog posts listed? why isn’t my wordpress working in that aspect? I already cleared all cache.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Your specific theme may have different options for changing how many posts are shown. If your specific theme does not follow the method from this article, we would recommend reaching out to your theme’s support and they should be able to assist.

      Admin

  5. VireakPhou says

    I don’t how to say after saw your article, I already sit 4h in front of computer to find it on theme editor. I try to read coding one by one all of code page in theme editor but still can not found how to limit post on home page.

    After that, I try to search and found your article , I feel I’m so crazy why i’m not search since before .

  6. Jennifer says

    I did this, but it did not update the number of posts shown on my main blog page. Any suggestions?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      If your site is ignoring that setting you would want to reach out to your theme’s support to ensure they don’t have a different setting you would need to change.

      Admin

  7. Ahsan says

    Hi, I want to know is it necessary to have more than 1 page for all my blog posts or can I have all the blog posts on 1 page and only display 10 posts on homepage.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      It is necessary to have multiple blog pages for most sites unless they’re using infinite scroll, otherwise, your site would need to wait for every post to load when you visited the blog page

      Admin

  8. Albert Kayindama says

    I have reduced the settings to 10 but the homepage is still showing more than 50 posts on the homepage. Kindly assist me.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      If your theme is ignoring these settings you would want to reach out to your theme’s support to ensure there is not a theme-specific setting that needs to be applied.

      Admin

  9. Shaun says

    If you limit the page to 10 posts, how do you avoid duplicate meta information? For example:
    site.com/blog/ and
    site.com/blog/page/2/
    would have the same meta info, wouldn’t they?

    Does this affect SEO or I am I barking up the wrong tree?

  10. E.B. says

    This does unfortunately not work for me. I could set the earlier post display to ten, yet only the first two posts appear on the blog, no more and not the latest ones, making it appear rather empty.
    It doesn’t help that when I go to settings there is no “Reading” but only the Widget of previous posts in which I can – hypothetically – control this.
    Another thing that is irksome is that I cannot remove the author name in the title of “Recent Posts.” It is automatically added and cuts off part of the author name.

    • WPBeginner Support says

      It sounds like your specific theme is overriding the display of the content. If you reach out to your theme’s support they should be able to let you know where they moved the option and help fix the author display issue.

      Admin

  11. Colleen Ryer says

    I set the number of posts to display at 10. This works fine, but the Next button reloads the same posts instead of the next 10. Would sure love to know how to fix this, rather than load every post all on one page.

  12. eMMA says

    Is there any way we can make ONLY our catergory pages show 10+ posts? I want to keep my front page with only 3-5 posts but have more for catergorys.
    Thanks

  13. Rory Rinaldi says

    I have been messing with this all day. I am trying to get 3 posts on my page.
    Posts are set to 3. Site shows 4. I can set it to 5 and it will show 5 but if I set it to 2 it still shows 4. HELP!!!!

    • Rory Rinaldi says

      I was able to get the 4th post to drop off so I only see 3! Now the featured post (which is the 4th) shows as the featured post without the title – Aggggghhhhh!

  14. Eric Henderson says

    Hi

    I would like my posts to have a limited lifespan. In other words, is there a mechanism by which one can , for example, only show posts that have been made int he last 24 hours (or some other time, perhaps as short as 30 minutes). thank you!

  15. jekku says

    yeah this doesn’t work for me. Tried it over and over, both “posts” and “days.”

    somebody help and fix this!

  16. Alex Anderson says

    On my site, I have 2 separate running blogs named news and tips with a preview window for each on my homepage.

    Currently, the setting to read is set to 2 entries which means I am able to see 2 entries on my homepage preview and on my blog page. However, if I increase past 2 entries, the preview window on the homepage becomes too long and causes issues. I would iike the preview window on the homepage to display 2 of the most recent entries in each blog and when clicked on the actual blog page or ‘view all’ button’ which leads to the blog page, I would like all the entries to be displayed.

    Do you know how I can accomplish this?

  17. Kate says

    Thank you so much!!! This newbie was looking in CSS to change it. Forehead slap! I’m happier than I should be about this :)

    Kate

  18. Luke says

    How can I put a ‘Next Page’ button at the bottom of my five blog posts shown? I have many more that I’d like to have available.

    Also, can I archive my posts by month/topic?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Hey Luke,

      WordPress automatically creates archive pages for your posts by months. You can add archives or category widgets to displays those archives in the sidebar.

      The Next and Previous buttons should be automatically added by your WordPress theme. Please contact your theme support.

      Admin

  19. bethany says

    hi
    when i set posts_per_pages =>4
    it shows me 4 post of the category
    but if category has no post
    it show unrelated post by my special category
    why this happens?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Hi Ricardo,

      If we are talking about navigation menus, then please see our guide on how to add navigation menu in WordPress. It will show you how to add posts to navigation menu and how you can add more posts.

      On the other hand, if we are talking about posts that appear in your blog’s sidebar such as recent posts, then you will need to visit Appearance > Widgets page and click on the recent posts widget in your sidebar to expand its settings. There you will find the number of posts option that you can change to any number you want.

      Hope this helps

      Admin

  20. R Salter says

    Help! This doesn’t seem ot work for my blog. However many (or few) posts I put in to the ‘blog pages show at most’ page I still end up with a long list on my homepage. At the moment it is reaching back to last January. Have you got any further advice on how to change this please because it is very hard to manage at the moment.

    • Hannah says

      This is happening to me too! I’ve tried everything and my homepage still shows all of my posts. Did you find out a way to fix this?

  21. Hannah says

    My homepage is currently showing all 611 of my posts even though I have limited it to 10 Posts Per Page. I have tried disabling my plugins, and changed my theme to the WordPress default and still it didn’t work. I’ve even had Bluehost (my blogs host) reinstall all of the WordPress Core Files but still it doesn’t work and so now my blog load speed is really really slow. Any advice?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Hi Hannah,

      Try deleting all your WordPress themes using FTP client and then reinstall a fresh copy of a default WordPress theme like Twenty Sixteen. Make sure you have all plugins disabled.

      Admin

      • Hannah says

        Nope, this hasn’t worked.
        Deleted all my themes via FTP client, deactivated all plugins, added default theme twenty seventeen and I still have all my blog posts showing on my homepage. I don’t understand what I am doing wrong. I have literally tried everything.
        Hannah

        • Omid says

          this is a bug in twenty seventeen theme. you can fix it by doing
          1- go to /wp-content/themes/twentyseventeen/template-parts/page/content-front-page-panels.php
          2-go to line 55
          3-put get_option( ‘posts_per_page’) instead of 3

          regards

  22. Tanay Talesra says

    Thanks for the tip. After reading your blog post, I have set the maximum number of posts on category, tag and archives pages to 10 but my homepage is showing around 25 posts. Do you have a tutorial for controlling the number of blog posts on homepage? Thanks.

  23. Nate Balcom says

    Thanks for this post. I always forget where this is hidden in the WordPress dashboard. Love the website. Do you ever accept guest bloggers? I’d love to contribute. Once again thanks and cheers.

  24. Suzanne Turner says

    Hi
    Am wanting to have 10 posts per page but 3 posts on my home page. Is it possible to do that?
    Thanks

  25. Jen Brown says

    Is there a way to set different numbers of posts for the homepage and for my category pages? My homepage and category pages seem to be tied together. I would like the homepage to continue to show 2 posts but I would like t eh category pages to show 3 posts.

    • Bhagwad Park says

      Here’s a little tutorial showing how to control the number of posts in the home page alone:

      The challenge arises when you want the subsequent index pages (page 1, page 2 etc) to be “normal”. Then you need to work some math magic, as the tutorial shows).

      However, if you don’t mind your “next” pages showing the same number of posts as your main page, then the code is much simpler…

  26. ST says

    Hi
    Suddenly my dashboard doesn’t show Reading in the list of settings any more. Is that due to some general upgrade?
    thanks

  27. Pete Boyle says

    Useful post, thanks for the info.

    On the topic, would you advocate having a set number of blog posts per page or enable infinite scrolling? I’m curious as to whether one has a distinct advantage over the other.

    Thanks

  28. Evelyn Guzman says

    Hi,

    This is great what you are doing. My Reading setting is showing 10 posts so I am going to keep it that way.

    My main problem though is I am getting a lot of spams. There are plugins to stop this I know but the version I am using is 2.7.1 and there does not seem anything for this version. Please let me know if you know something that will stop me from getting those spams. I have heard horror stories of ruining websites when updating to a newer WP version so I am thinking of staying on with the old.

  29. Fran Eleazer says

    Thanks for the tip, however, my blog page is showing 6, even though the setting you referenced above says 10. I changed it to 4 and it had no effect on the blog page. Any suggestions?

    Thanks,
    Fran

  30. david Castle says

    on the front page of my blog, where past blogs are listed by date and in date order, how can I show the title of each of those blogs – so I and others can return to them by title and not just by date? This is particularly important to return to blogs over six or nine months old

    • WPBeginner Support says

      We assume that by blogs you meant your blog posts. There is a widget under Appearance » Widgets titled Recent Posts, you can drag and drop it to your sidebar and choose the number of posts you want it to display. Let us know if this answered your question.

      Admin

  31. Nancy Eha says

    My blog show the number of comments (3)
    But not the comments unless you click on (3)
    How can I change that?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      Nancy, most themes are intentionally setup that way. On the main page of your blog all your posts are displayed and a comment count is displayed as a link. To see comments a user needs to click on the comments link. This takes user to the single post view, where all the comments for that particular post are displayed.

      There are themes like P2 which display comments right below the post on the front page.

      Admin

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