How Many Posts Should You Show On Your Blog’s Front Page?

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96 Responses to “How Many Posts Should You Show On Your Blog’s Front Page?”

• Brian

  July 3rd, 2008 4:32 am

  Currently show 5 with text and image using the excert (more feature) of wp - so not the whole article. These are then followed by 5 headlines only.

  Again, don’t want the page to be too long

• Egbert

  July 3rd, 2008 4:32 am

  I have three posts on my frontpage. Just as you, I think if someone visits and is not interested in the first (only) post, he might leave.

  excerpts? Well I thought about them, but often it`s hard for me to decide where to put it… If I were to use them, I had to write very well made post introductions which are more like summaries. But I don`t like that idea (perhaps i`m lazy), so I decided to show full length post.

  If i where to use excerpts, I would put 5 post on my frotpage instead of 3 full ones

• dandellion Kimban

  July 3rd, 2008 4:33 am

  Seven.
  Actual number is not so important. I tend to have enough posts to show blog’s diversity. And to visualy balance the length of the sidebar. But no matter how many posts is there, I absolutely hate full posts on the front page. Scrolling several screens just to see what is the next post is boring.

• DJ @ Fermentarium

  July 3rd, 2008 4:34 am

  I have tons of story titles on my site, but very few with summaries. I wanted my site to look more CNN and less blog.

• Raag Vamdatt

  July 3rd, 2008 4:35 am

  I follow an approach I don’t see being followed by most other bloggers (not sure if that’s good or bad!).

  I have a fixed text on the first page, that introduces people to the site. Yes, it is fixed - it remains there all the time. It tells people what the site contains, and talks about all the stuff they can do on the site.

  But at the top of the page, I have a block showing the title of the latst 6 posts. So, people can get an idea about the latest posts. This block is there on all the pages.

  Also, on the left side menu, I have categories displayed prominantly.

  This has worked quite well for me!

• Rajaie AlKorani

  July 3rd, 2008 4:42 am

  I am currently using five posts on my blog, not too much, not too little, just the right amount

• James Kolacz

  July 3rd, 2008 4:44 am

  I have 3 featured in a flash unit and then 10 going down the page. However I also use small blurbs of the content so the page is not to long. I find that people hate scrolling.

• Frugal Dad

  July 3rd, 2008 4:44 am

  I can’t help but wonder if people limit the number of posts on the front page to increase page views per visit. I’ve been considering a move to show excerpts on my font page and increasing the number of article’s shown in an effort to attact those who are referred directly to the home page from media mentions, etc.

• Todor Christov

  July 3rd, 2008 4:46 am

  I run 6-7 blogs and my personal experience shows that the optimal number of posts on the homepage of a blog should vary between 5 to 7 posts.

  It would use 5-6 posts on the front page if my blog is updated with 3-5 posts per week and would prefer 7 posts if my blog is updated on a regular daily basis.

  In both cases, showing excerpts is the better option, as far as it makes the blog outlook much cleaner, the number of pageviews is slightly increased and there are some duplicate content issues which can be solved this way, too.

• Geek's Dream Girl

  July 3rd, 2008 4:54 am

  I have two tabs on my front page - Geek Love and Geek Life. Geek Love is the default tab. So I guess there’s SORT OF two articles on the main page, but you gotta click a tab to see the second.

  My recent posts box is just to the right, so folks can see the last 10 posts or so, and just below the featured articles box are the Best Of for Geek Life and Geek Love.

  I like to keep the front page pretty clean and use the –more– cut so that (hopefully) the top of the Best Of’s ends up above the fold. Doesn’t always happen, but that’s ok. :-)

• Chris (Amateur Traveler)

  July 3rd, 2008 4:56 am

  As my page length goes up I decreased the number per page from 10 to 5

• webprofessor

  July 3rd, 2008 4:58 am

  I prefer 3 or so full length posts. As a reader I despise snippets. If I had time I would write summaries for all my posts and I would display those… but I don’ so I go with full posts instead..

• Shanel Yang

  July 3rd, 2008 4:58 am

  I guess I’m in the minority here. I put the entire post (2 of them in fact) on my blog page. But, I also have menu buttons for my major categories of “People,” “Work,” “Money,” “English,” and “Law” that show the 10 latest titles per page plus the beginning paragraph or so of each. This seems to work well for me b/c my posts are content heavy and anyone who just wanted a quickie-read is not going to be happy on my blog anyway. ; )

• Pablo Matamoros

  July 3rd, 2008 5:00 am

  Darren,

  I agree with you. I don’t like long pages. So I have excerpts in the front page of my blog section. I show only 3 excerpts and have a sidebar with the most popular posts and recent posts (that by the way I’ve been so busy that I’m a bit behind my posting schedule).

  I have a question: What works better as landing page: a “static” page or the blog section?. I have a “static” page to introduce the concept behind my freelance business, but I’m not sure if it is a good idea.

• Lowell

  July 3rd, 2008 5:01 am

  I’ve gone from showing as many as ten back to either showing one or three on most of mine. I do just one product oriented blog where I still show seven.

  i always show the full article.

  What I have done is use the widgets in WP 2.5 to make sure there’ s a list of recent articles (posts) somewhere the browser will see it, and also a category list, which I usually rename to something like topics.

  Works for me.

  Good subject Darren,

  Lowell

• Jeff@MySuper-Charged Life

  July 3rd, 2008 5:08 am

  I display five full posts on my site. However, I understand the scrolling issue and I may consider going to excerpts in the future. I really like sites that have what I call more of a magazine like theme.

  The ProBlogger home page is too busy for my tastes. Of course, Darren is extremely more successful as a blogger than I am so maybe he’s on to something. :)

• Lee Milthorpe

  July 3rd, 2008 5:11 am

  I’ve gone for ten.

  My readers come to see my drawings and illustrations, not to read pages of text so I find that showing ten posts gives new visitors more of a view about what I do or what my style is, whereas if I were to just show one or two there would be more visitors spending less time on the site which would probably not be enough to convince them to come back.

• Kolia Shlapak

  July 3rd, 2008 5:11 am

  My choise is 5 but it certainly depends on the length of the summary… I don’t like when the home page is more than 5 screens long

• The Masked Millionaire

  July 3rd, 2008 5:12 am

  My blog, “TheMaskedMillionaire” shows the last 10 posts in their entirety on the front page.

  I never write very long post so it is not as much as you might think.

  I like the format I have. I believe it gets people to read more of what I have write.

  Take a look and let me know what you think.

  The Masked Millionaire

• Michael

  July 3rd, 2008 5:13 am

  I think the default for Blogger is 7 at least that is what I have always seen.
  This provides a pretty diverse set provided I am posting pretty regulary within my different categories.
  Currently I have an List of activities, a movie review, a health/Eating tip, Education tip and another list of activities

  I keep a sidebar with some Categories so you can pull up documents within a category of interest
  My Blog is http://kidzense.blogspot.com

• Kishore

  July 3rd, 2008 5:13 am

  I feel that the number of posts on the front page should be related to the number of posts done a day. If you do about 5 posts a day, then you should have at least 10 post excerpts on the front page, but if its like 1 post a day, you can keep maximum of 5 posts on the front page. This could give maximum exposure to all your posts and your readers may not miss your posts

• Josh

  July 3rd, 2008 5:16 am

  My blog is cool because it displays all of the most recent post, and then just shows little segments of older posts. Works well for me :)

• C K

  July 3rd, 2008 5:17 am

  I have 5 posts with excerpts for all of them. I posted the same question on a forum a couple of days back. Some indicated that they find it a hassle having to click a link in order to read the entire post.

  Why I did that? Mainly because I hope to showcase more of my posts without having the reader to scroll all the way down, which most won’t.

• tcdzomba (GFCF Experience)

  July 3rd, 2008 5:18 am

  Darren,

  Thanks for responding so quickly to my request. It’s good to see all the different responses in the comments. Right now I am running three but based on these responses may increase it by a post or two.

  Excerpts seems to be a good option too but I don’t know how to set that up in Blogger. Does anyone know?

• James Wilcox

  July 3rd, 2008 5:21 am

  I originally started out using exceprts or employing the “more” method so that users would have to click to see more of the post but I found that with too many articles (and I tend to illustrate with pictures a lot) it looked confusing. Now I just limit the number of posts to about 5 or 6 and it fills out the page nicely.

• Paul

  July 3rd, 2008 5:23 am

  I guess it comes down to the length of the posts. I find that long posts would be better as blurbs on the front page, maybe 6 - 8 at a time. However, with shorter posts I don’t see a problem with a full 10 at full length. But even still, I think blurbs are the most ideal because of the way people browse blogs. Just noticing the way people use feeds seems to make sense that people would want blurbs in the blog as well.

  Is there a plug in available to format your page like this? Or is it theme dependent?

• Kirk Warren

  July 3rd, 2008 5:23 am

  The actual question should be how many above the fold. I imagine most are using Blogger or Wordpress and they use 5-7 posts on the main page, but only one or two probably are above the fold, depending on whether or not they use extended post summaries.

  If it’s like Blogger’s front page, yes, it probably matters how many posts he sticks there. But, for the rest of us, it’s typically 1-2 posts and the rest are just things people end up scrolling down for and most probably give up after 3 or 4 page downs, making the final talley not overly important.

• Tyler Ingram

  July 3rd, 2008 5:27 am

  I have the 4 most recent posts (all excerpts but modified) and I created a script that will search and find the first image it finds, thumbnails it and puts it ahead of the excerpts on the first page.

  I also display the 2 most recent reviews I have done to perhaps entice more readers/visitors with interesting topic (among other reasons for me to do this)

• bugsy

  July 3rd, 2008 5:36 am

  Currently running 10. Eeek… looks like I need to cut it down. Have been considering excerpts so I can show 10, but I know readers like to see the full post.

• Alexander

  July 3rd, 2008 5:43 am

  I have 5 posts on the front page, but just an excerpt, As a reader I don’t mind doing one click to read the whole post and actually prefer to have a variety of optioms on the front page.

  But not with clutter.

• David Walker

  July 3rd, 2008 5:43 am

  My blog is still in the early stages but as well as five featured articles which rotate at the top of the page, in time it will have links to about 30 different posts and articles on the front page, split across several categories.

  The latest post in each category has an excerpt, with the remainder just clickable titles.

  It sounds a lot but I think it’s all organised rather neatly. Let me know what you think!

• Sandy Naidu

  July 3rd, 2008 5:45 am

  Atleast 5 to 6 I think…Just to give them a choice and let them know what I am all about…

• Silky

  July 3rd, 2008 5:55 am

  I’ve played about with this but have stuck on 10 full posts for quite some time now.

  I think 10 posts gives people a good idea of what my blog is about and I use full posts because I want people to be able to read my blog on it’s home page.

  I think it would change the whole user experience (and the relationship I have with readers) if the home page was simply a sign post to the rest of my blog’s content.

• Debby Phillips

  July 3rd, 2008 5:57 am

  I agree that I do not want my front page to look cluttered. I think anywhere from 4-6 posts on the front page are ideal, depending on the length of your posts. If they are longer, display less posts.

• Søren Storm Hansen

  July 3rd, 2008 6:03 am

  It’s all about design.

  I have 35 posts from 8 categories on the front page - some excerpts, some links. And a lot of pictures.

  It looks more like media than blog and works quite well. More clicks. Many more.

• Anna

  July 3rd, 2008 6:11 am

  The look of my blog is very important to me, as it’s largely about crafts and my readers are looking for visual inspiration. I have six or seven posts on my front page and I try to keep them quite visually varied.

• JK Swopes

  July 3rd, 2008 6:19 am

  Good topic Darren. Personally I like to use excerpts as well as only a few posts on the front page. I like what Brian said about the 5 posts w/excerpts then 5 headlines.

  My reason for using excerpts is two-fold. One, I like to get more on the front page without it being to cluttered and long, and two, I heard it’s a good idea to only have one of your pages show the full article. Something to do with duplicate content and such?

  So,I try to use excerpts on every page except the single post page. However, I wouldn’t mind exploring what Brian is doing with the excerpts and headlines on the front page, as I like how that looks and the information it provides without being too cluttered.

• Carole Cohen

  July 3rd, 2008 6:38 am

  There is a debate that always seems to tell me there are just as many people who hate the excerpts (readers) as there are people who prefer them. I have opted not to excerpt, and I follow the philosophy of the commenter who said enough to balance the sidebar. I average five posts on front page since my topics are diverse. Again, lots of opinions so what the right answer is, is elusive to me. I do know I prefer to worry more about what readers want than SEO. I’m finding the comments here interesting.

• Mrs. Micah

  July 3rd, 2008 6:40 am

  Depends on the blog. 3, 5, & 7 are all numbers I’ve experimented with.

  I determine part of it based on the length of my sidebars (I don’t want them to be longer than the entire front page, even if they’re longer than many individual posts (but often shorter than 2). And in part based on what feels right when I scroll down the page. 10 just seemed like too much. I have one blog with very short posts, so I put 7 on the front page. Another has much longer, so 3. I hope that after that point people will click on to the next. But if not they’ve gotten more than 1.

• Cheri

  July 3rd, 2008 7:01 am

  I think I’m still figuring out what will work best for me too. What I’ve thought about doing (and don’t know how to do yet - or even if it’s possible) is creating the page in such a way that links to a previous post in a new post appear on the same page. So, if you clicked the link within the new post, the screen would page-down to where the old post is instead of changing the page or opening a new window. That would be ideal . . . but I imagine a bit too much programming for my tech-limited self at the moment.

• Drew McManus

  July 3rd, 2008 7:06 am

  I think it depends on posting frequency and if there’s any schedule to posting. My personal blog maintains a strict posting schedule: one post every weekday. As such, my front page has five posts and I use extended entries of varying lengths. this way, readers can expect to easily scroll through the front page. Consequently, I try to make sure my side column content isn’t so long as to hang down beyond the post column. This keeps the page looking tidy.

• Lenin Nair

  July 3rd, 2008 7:08 am

  Dear Darren,

  I have a story to add. In my Blogspot blog, I recently enabled the expandable post summaries feature. And with the hope that it will reduce the home page content to a paragraph of summary for each post, I increased the number of default posts to about ten. And only later I found out that the posts actually loaded fully nonetheless. And that caused the blog’s total size to rise to 400 KB. Would you believe?

  With the hundredth post in CuteWriting (yesterday) I was at work the new design. Wordpress design is now adopted to Blogspot blog. Please check that out and I am back at the three post style. Now on, I am going to keep this and not do any expandable post tweaking. In WordPress it is easy, but in Blogspot it’s not at all possible until Blogger themselves release such a feature.

  Liked your post

  Lenin

• jackr

  July 3rd, 2008 7:15 am

  Ten, because that’s the TypePad default, apparently, and I’m still too head-scratchy about this to have some other opinion.

  Excerpts, not whole entries, because I’m pretty sure my drive-by reader has better things to do than read every single word I’ve ever blogged. Or, anyway, if I can’t convince him otherwise in the first paragraph or two, then I don’t deserve the blogospace!

• Sarah Jo

  July 3rd, 2008 7:25 am

  I have one featured post on my home page plus 4-6 other post excerpts. Once I subscribe to a blog, I don’t visit the actual site very much, so as long as all the content is worthwhile, I have no preference for the format of other blogs.

• Winning Startups

  July 3rd, 2008 7:28 am

  I post at least once a day on my blog and I do three stories per page. I’ve experimented with various pages per page and it hasn’t made much difference really. I’ve tried to implement the read more thing to get more pageviews but I have been unsuccessful. Every time I do the read more thing on my blog it wants to add the feature to all my past posts as well as future ones. Me no like dat.

• MBL

  July 3rd, 2008 8:04 am

  Clutter? Darren, you have one of the most cluttered home page live on the ‘net. I don’t even go to your home page anymore.

  I do agree with you, setting a limit although I have hemmed and hawwed over excerpts and full posts. I think it also depends on whether you are a new blog or not, and the frequency of your posts as well.

  Then again, your “niche” is another factor as well.

  And let’s us not forget the important factor, our readers.

• Edward Lomax

  July 3rd, 2008 8:20 am

  I use a theme that let’s you have a lot of different posts on the home page.

  I chose this theme for this very feature, as I feel it gives my visitors a bigger snapshot of what’s on the blog so they find more things they are interested in.

  My concern was that people coming to the blog the first time would really have to be interested in the post showing to read it and then explore further into the blog. At least now they can have a variety of choices, increasing the chance they will see something of interest and importance to them.

  I really think the theme has a lot to do with it.

• Jesse Hines

  July 3rd, 2008 8:46 am

  I use five posts per page.

  I think that’s a good and reasonable number–it provides enough on the first page to give readers a true sense of what the blog is all about without making them have to scroll down a ton.

• Robin Capper

  July 3rd, 2008 9:33 am

  I have headlines and short excerpts on my landing page. Until recently this was 3/blog but just upped it to 5 after a reader sugggestion.

  The actual blogs show full posts, currently 10 but sometimes I change that if there are a bunch of long/short posts.

• Lorna

  July 3rd, 2008 9:53 am

  Mine uses 5 posts. The content fits just right with the sidebar and my blog visitors don’t have to scroll down too much.

• Jarrod - Warrior Development

  July 3rd, 2008 10:26 am

  I am definitely for showing excerpts. When someone arrives on my blog they are looking for something to read so I give them a few options.

• Corey Freeman

  July 3rd, 2008 10:27 am

  I go for full posts on my front page, mostly because I’m new to really configuring wordpress to my needs. (And it just looks cooler that way IMO. Probably not good SEO) I believe I display 10 posts per page, but I’ll probably cut it back to 3 (I write long posts) just to shorten up the slider and make everything more attractive.

  Once I’m a few months in, and I do a re-design (I have one planned for “back to school” time.) I’ll probably use excerpts and have one featured post. Then maybe add a few more front page features.

• ElegantCelebBlogger

  July 3rd, 2008 10:31 am

  I currently have 10 posts on my front page, but being a newbie, I didn’t know that I could control the number. I will have to look into that.

  I have seen blog formats that only show an excerpt of each post, but I didn’t like them because I don’t like having to click on a link to read the whole post, so I don’t use those types of layouts, like Hemingway. Also, since I have a celebrity blog, it’s visually more appealing to have the whole post on the front page of the blog, anyway.

• amirulcyber

  July 3rd, 2008 11:02 am

  Thank for your advice.

• asrai

  July 3rd, 2008 11:12 am

  I used to have 5-10 posts on my front page but I found that most people hate scrolling down too much and usually just click on the one they readily see.

  So now I have the current post in excerpt then the next 3 with thumbnails plus excerpt. People click more on image links. ^^

• Medical Transcriptionist

  July 3rd, 2008 11:19 am

  I use only excerpts to avoid duplicate content issue in terms of SEO.

• garry

  July 3rd, 2008 11:26 am

  What is the perfect amount of posts to have on your blog, I think this could well be a questions that doesn’t have a defined answer! What may work for a particular type of blog may well not work so good for another. From a personal point of view, It isn’t really something that I have really giving much thought too, the amount of posts that a blog has on the front page wont stop me from looking at other articles on that particular blog, what will stop me, is if the blog is a load of crap!

  But being a blogger of only 3 months, what do I know! It could be something that I may have to put more thought into as my blogging career progresses.

• Noobpreneur

  July 3rd, 2008 1:34 pm

  Darren,

  I have 3 full post on my blog’s frontpage.

  I was thinking about having more post as excerpts - but excerpts often make a blog looks like an auto-blog, IMO.

  Cheers!

• actrepreneur

  July 3rd, 2008 2:15 pm

  Interesting post. Thanks for all the wisdom on blogging!! Have a great holiday weekend…

• www.ereviewmobile.com

  July 3rd, 2008 2:45 pm

  an effective for the frontpage should goes 5 posts or lower which the recent is uppest..as for my views, ppl seem hate scrolling mouse down. “above the fold” is the best words to describe…

• Michael

  July 3rd, 2008 4:31 pm

  I show 8 posts on my homepage, the reason I chose that is because my goal is to write 4 posts per day and having 8 on the homepage would show two days worth of posts. I’ve considered moving to 12 but I like the scroll length of 8 posts.

• Ajith Edassery

  July 3rd, 2008 8:14 pm

  I go with Michael… 8 posts is what I show and the first post separated from all others with an ad space. I use excerpts on home page and it’s not one or two line excerpt but say about 200 words or couple of paragraphs…

  The reason to go for excerpts is to avoid showing the users too much text in the first visible pane (without using scrolling)

  The reason to show up to 8 posts: Well, the side bar content is kinda common for all pages/posts/archives etc. So I wanted to have the 8 posts length exceeding a little more than the side bar contents (and not the other way ie. little content and a long sidebar then)

• B. Durant

  July 3rd, 2008 8:43 pm

  I find that displaying 1 post in full and 4 partials works well for me. Enough for people to get an idea of my style but not so much as to be overwhelming.

  Of course I also think your theme makes a big difference. Since I use the traditional “cookie-cutter” themes at this point everything is oriented top to bottom. If I used something like the one here at Problogger I’d probably do it a little different than I do now.

• Aravind

  July 3rd, 2008 10:27 pm

  I show just 3 on my main page. That’s ideal. That way readers get a variety as you mentioned, and it’s not too long as well.

• Caspar

  July 3rd, 2008 10:37 pm

  On my newest site I’m using the Fresh News wordpress theme so I can ‘feature’ posts - I have two of the most recentl ‘important’ posts in a different style to the others. Below that, it’s everything in chronological order. I’ve got ten there. So that’s 12 on the front page.

  And I use excerpts on my front page, not for clickthroughs, but simply because it looks a lot neater. Normally I dislike these but on the layout I’m using it works really well.

• Bruce Houghton / Hypebot.com

  July 3rd, 2008 10:37 pm

  I like Darren’s approach. I can scan a bunch of content quickly and click on what matters to me without never ending scrolling.

  Does anyone know of templates to help create a front page that uses snippets and allows for “best of” lists as on this site? I’d even be willing to pay a (little) bit for it.

  Email me @ hypebot-at-skylineonline-dot-com

• Nate Desmond

  July 3rd, 2008 11:35 pm

  I normally have about ten post on my front page. My main concern is simply making sure the page loads quickly.

• guardian angel

  July 3rd, 2008 11:48 pm

  I usually have 5 posts in my front page and all of them has no excerpts, but someone from a forum to reduce them because it goes slow to open considering that I include photos on them.

  So now, I maintain 3 posts on my front page. However, I see to it that my readers will not scroll down that long while reading. I believe this act will turn them off. In addition, I align my sidebar content to maximize the page.

  Although it may be an advantage to have excerpts (or expandable posts) to invite more readers, it can also slower your blog because you only just “hide” them but they are still there.

  Thanks.

• Make Money Talks

  July 4th, 2008 12:25 am

  I am stacked with 5 posts on front site page.

• Matt Wardman

  July 4th, 2008 12:41 am

  I tend to run at about 7 or 8, and use excerpts. When I originally went for longer excerpts, one of the models was the old design here. But I vary the length of the Excerpt too.

  I have evolved the approach. I now have the blog:

  http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/

  and an “Excerpt only” tabbed front page on the domain root, which allows the reader to look at up to 100 excerpts if they wish:

  http://www.mattwardman.com

  Matt

• Matt Wardman

  July 4th, 2008 12:47 am

  Don’t forget Daniel’s plugin to do one full post and several excerpts:

  http://www.dailyblogtips.com/homepage-excerpts-wordpress-plugin/

• Mike Nichols

  July 4th, 2008 2:15 am

  Right now I have ten posts on the front page, all excerpts, with 2 or 3 paragraphs showing. My daily posts are quite long, up to 1000 words, and having the full post on the front page would be just too much. I write the first paragraphs with the idea that they will be teasers to get the reader to read the full post.

  I might reduce the number of posts on the front page at some point, but I want to show the reader the range and depth of my blog. It’s only five page-down’s to the bottom, anyway.

  Works for me!

• Barry

  July 4th, 2008 2:41 am

  On my Research Recap blog, I include the ten most recent posts on the front page. The first post is listed in its entirety while the next 9 have just the first paragraph and an image. This blog covers a handful of investment-related topics, so the new user who may not be interested in, say, green technology, might be interested in a post on the credit crunch, social media or corporate governance issues.
  I doubt many people scroll all the way to the bottom, but the page loads quickly and I don’t think that the length has any negative impact.
  I also use a tag cloud and list of recent posts so that new users can easily figure out what the blog is about and whether it’s relevant to them.

• Chase Roper

  July 4th, 2008 4:44 am

  I currently show 2 or three full posts, but I keep intending to switch it to 7 post summaries.

• Stephen James

  July 4th, 2008 5:23 am

  The number of posts should be inverse-proportional to the frequency of your posts. I only post a few times a month on each of my four blogs.

  No on visits the home page unless they are lost/restarting navigation or directly visiting you blog (referral/repeat visitor). I only have one post with links to the last three posts on my home pages, because I like the clean look of it, and since I post so infrequently.

  What’s the point of having a lot of posts on your homepage if they don’t change often?

• Phil

  July 4th, 2008 5:39 am

  I’ve kept it around 10, but have thought of shortening it.

  I only half like the idea of excerpts. If I could allow my readers to expand an […exerpt..] I would probably put excerpts on all but my most recent 1 or 2 posts.

  Anybody know of a WordPress plugin that expands excerpts on the same page?

• Slevi

  July 4th, 2008 6:00 am

  2 excerpts and 15 headlines currently, will be altering that slightly though in the future but never going to be switching back to full posts again on the front page. I think it lengthens it too much, especially if multiple longer posts get there.

• Carlos - Negocio de Viajes por Internet

  July 4th, 2008 8:43 am

  I guess it depends on the average lenght of the posts. The more lenghty the posts, the less amount of posts. It’s a balance issue I would say.

  Another thing to consider would be the sidebar. If you have a lot of information in the sidebar, you should have enough posts in order to take advantage of the available space in the monitor screen. On the other hand, if you don’t have a lot of information in your sidebar, and a lot of posts, your screen would look kind of empty

  In my case I manage between 8-10 posts in the front page, trying to balance the posts lenght and the sidebar length as well…

• Davina

  July 4th, 2008 10:40 am

  By default, I currently have 4 posts on my front page because I’m just beginning and that is all I have written.

  I have been using excerpts because I want to show the readers a variety of posts and pictures, and to give them the option to scan the first few sentences to see if they want to read on.

• Dean

  July 4th, 2008 3:46 pm

  I find 3 to 5 way enough also prefer a paragraph or two which then links of to something else where full article can be viewed. Due to the amount of reading I do, I like to hit the headlines and maybe a sentence or to to see if I like the article before going further.

• Mike

  July 4th, 2008 8:15 pm

  I started with ten, went to five, but i decided to come back to 10 because i write around 15 articles a month and i have a community of visotors who are limited and not so good at internet. So i am back to ten.

• Egbert

  July 4th, 2008 8:24 pm

  me again,
  above in the comments I wrote that I use 3 full length pages, but soon after I read this post and especially the other comments I decided do give excerpts a try. Since my blog quite young, this could be done in a relative short time.

  I people like it better this way I cannot say yet, but it immediately decreased the bouncerate.

  So excerpts actually do have an effect: they animate people to click around, insted of just reading one or two posts and leave. This could be essential when it comes to ad clickrates / impressions.

  I wonder why no one here mentioned the bouncerate as an measurable indicator for the effect of excerpts ???

  so long. Egbert

• Kolia Shlapak

  July 4th, 2008 8:38 pm

  Egbert, thanks for a good idea

• Egbert

  July 5th, 2008 12:23 am

  I`m glad I could inspire you

  PS: sorry for the bad spelling / missing words in my previous post… I was thinking about something else while writing

• Sue

  July 5th, 2008 6:27 am

  I have one featured post on the front page, plus 4 recent articles. All are excerpts. I also have 5 or 6 miniposts in the right sidebar, and 5 updates and corrections in the left. All are excerpted.

  I try to keep the article posts equal to the sidebars, so there are no great areas of white space. I sometimes have to change the amount of miniposts showing to do that, but otherwise it pretty much stays the same.

  I think a lot depends on your theme, also. A standard blog type theme can have a different layout and still look good, but a magazine style theme virtually screams for excerpts.

  I’ve seen one blog in my tiny little niche that had 20 full posts on the front page. Not very professional looking, IMO.

• Yin Teing

  July 6th, 2008 12:19 am

  I have 7 posts on the front page. My posts are generally lengthy, covering various aspect of health issues and fitness- so I would want visitors to generally know what I write but at the same time, do not require them to scroll all the way just to see other posts that do not interest them. Previously, I feature the full posts as I also thought there is nothing much that can be done with Blogger. Through some guided tutorials from the net, and trial and error, I’ve finally figured out how to truncate the posts at the front page on a Blogger template. After that, I find that the number of unique visitors (it has nothing to do with pages per click) literally doubled and they stayed longer on my site. So, I guess excerpts works for me.

• eranda

  July 6th, 2008 3:19 am

  I normally write bit long posts. I keep all my pages with 3 posts. I think that’s not too many. If you only have 1-2 posts and if the visitor do not get connected with the site he will not continue reading to the back pages.
  At the end of my every post,
  I put links for atleast 2 previous posts.
  And with the adsense experiments I did 3 posts did the work for me.So i am not gonna change it anytime sooner.
  Eranda
  antharjalaya.com

• Anthony - Staten Island

  July 6th, 2008 6:59 am

  I think that is the biggest problem with my blog right now, is in fact, I have too many posts on one page now I’m going too change it, but I’m afraid if i change it it will change my viewership. I will be changing soon. Nervous though.

• Syed Balkhi

  July 6th, 2008 8:10 am

  Darren, I have 5 posts on the blog page. I think 5 is a decent amount because sometimes there are too much in one post. I am using excerpt on posts, but I don’t always put readmore link. So you might see an entire post if the post is not that long and doesn’t make the page crowded. But if I see that the page will have tons of images and will look crowded then I put the first 3 paragraphs and then let the readers read it in the full post.

• 13 Ways to Build Links that Increase Traffic

  July 6th, 2008 10:45 pm

  I have a featurific widget on my front page, a WP plug-in and it features my selected “best posts” in a cool flash widget.

  Below that I have an excerpt from my latest post and in the sidebar is the recent posts and all posts by category. Everything is clearly labeled with Titles in bold.

  I think it’s important that readers come to the blog and be able to quickly see what’s there, and find the post titles without having to look all over the place.

  I think you can lose a lot of readers if the nav is unclear.

  Thank you!
  JR

• Ari Herzog

  July 7th, 2008 11:39 am

  It seems that there is no standard answer, so allow me to add that I recently updated my template with a magazine style, opting for one post on the front page with the excerpt or “teaser” feature.

  I also offer the 10 most recent posts in an easy location on a sidebar.

  What do folks think? See http://www.ariwriter.com

• Andrew Lightheart

  July 7th, 2008 12:46 pm

  I’m playing with the idea of using ‘More’ with very long posts (I do really long analyses of presentations for example which may go on for pages) and leaving shorter posts alone.

  I did go for the strategy of ‘curiosity’ posts (sticking the ‘More’ tag in the middle of a sentence) but it didn’t quite match with being an authentic communicator…!

  The thing I HATE is when someone’s post is shortened in an RSS reader. I just don’t read it.

• Louellen Coker

  July 7th, 2008 11:03 pm

  I keep 5 posts on the front page. I want to give readers a taste of diversity without getting too long.

• Kevin

  July 8th, 2008 7:25 am

  I keep about 5-6 posts on my blog frontpage. I also have the 10 most popular posts titles on my sidebar (which is visible on the frontpage). I get some decent click through on those popular post links.

• qbd

  July 15th, 2008 9:36 am

  I have about 12 posts on the main page. Not sure if it is a good idea because each post has an image. I know I hate loading loads of images from other webpages… actually might just change the number of posts now.

• Financial Nut

  August 1st, 2008 1:11 pm

  Hmm… interesting discussion. I decided to change mine from 10 full-length posts to 3.

  It just make more sense. Who wants to do all that scrolling anyway?

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