When this blog first started, I used to display 20 posts on the front page. As time pass, I reduced the number of front page post to 15, then 10 and now, only five posts are displayed per page. My reason for doing this was to reduce the load time and excessive scrolling required to get to the bottom of the page. Since some of my posts can reach over 1000 words - and since I don’t break the post up in to multiple pages - even having only five posts can create a very long page.
Would you like to see more than five posts at a time on this blog? I generally do two to three new posts per day so you generally will be able to catch some of yesterday’s posts. However, for readers who don’t visit this blog on a daily basis, they could end up not seeing all the new posts. However, this wouldn’t be the case if you subscribe to my RSS feed. 
The question for this weekend: How many posts do you show on your blog’s front page and what is your reasoning behind it?
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I was showing 10, but just cut it down to 5. Better look and feel now.
Same with me. I tended to write longer posts at the beginning and 10 made the site way too big on the front page. Lots of scrolling going on etc. I think 5 is the best for me now.
I currently have 5 posts on frontpage and they are excerpts instead of full posts, the main reason is not the long page but more is duplicate content and decreasing the size of the homepage as well as words in the homepage which than in return increases (slightly) the weight of my targeted keywords for the homepage. And I have to say, it performs much better.
excerpts posts on the homepage of a blog is the number one thing that makes me close my browser.
In my opinion it’s the worst way to throw away potential readers.
True, it does make it very annoying to read the content.
~ Dave
My is summarize and i feel that it could have 10, if you read long post then having 10 would be a little too much, don;t you think so?
I follows John like crazy, so if he is showing up 5 posts then how can i go by showing 6 or 7 posts
Because you should show what you think works best for your readers, John can show even 1000 posts in homepage I won’t care, as I read his posts via RSS.
Looks much better Zac - can be pretty annoying when a page is 1km long.
Five. When I embed AdSense into the posts, I can do three with ad units and two with link units.
Adsense isnt good for blogs!
That’s a pretty shallow comment. It may not be the best, but it’s not “not good’.
~ Dave
i’m a beginner. so what’s better ways to monetize a blog?
I use 6 too as not many users directly come to the home page. That is also the reason why I don’t use AdSense on my home page within posts too.
The fact is that most hits come to inner post pages and having AdSense on home pages definitely brings down the eCPM as not many click on them.
BTW in order to cut down on load time further you could also limit the content shown per post on the home page rather than showing the full content this could increase click throughs too.
Why don’t you set a cookie that saves the last time the person visited. Frequent visitors will see less and people who don’t check in too often see more.
Wordpress doesn’t have that option.
Yeah, that’s not an option for Wordpress. Even if you could, that’d confuse the hell out of search engines. Search engines in general like stable static content, not dynamic content.
We all know John doesn’t care much about SERPs
Ya, he’s still like banned for his own name.
~ Dave
But that is a good idea
No, I think that’s a stupid idea. Shoot me if you want to.
If that was available i’m sure John would consider implementing. Unfortunatley this isn’t an available Wordpress Hack.
I have 9 posts, but may reduced it to 5 after I apply my new theme.
For me, i increase from 3 to 5 to 7 now.
Well, if you take a look at my new theme, you will understand
3 is too short. 5-7 is fine in my opinion.
Is there an reason you don’t use the partial post method for the posts on the front page, or do you find visitors don’t like clicking on a ‘read more’ link?
That would reduce the amount of scrolling required on your front page. I see a lot of blogs doing it.
Because Danny hates that feature
Thats why lots of blog’s suck
It just adds extra work for the visitor. Make it as easy as possible to get to content.
~ Dave
10, as I have 2-3 posts a day, and want them to stay longer on the front page. But I do not show the full post on the front page.
I currently display three. This is due to googles T.O.S. To be honest It’s still quite annoying even though there are only three, as the content will span way down the page making the sidebar look even more desolate than it is.
You can use hacks to make the front page only show the first paragraph or so and a link to read more then put Adsense only in the individual post pages so that you don’t have to worry about the three block limit.
Here’s some links that will help with expandable post summaries: http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=blogger+hacks+expandable+summary&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
I blog daily and I show 5 posts on the front page. I show the full content rather than just a snippet.
I think that’s a good idea, having a partial post is really annoying as readers since you gotta click one more time, especially if that sites slow or hosted on another country.
Hmm… i will have to check out your blog now since you made some great questions about the QuarterWiki the other day…
I show the standard 10 because I like giving my readers plenty to read. I can see why you might want to use only 5 especially when you have posts like the Lambo Reventon one that had lots of pictures.
I use 10 posts after after my website becomes established. But for those of you that are having trouble getting the search engine boot to crawl you site, you may consider having 20 posts on your homepage. I find it that a lot of websites link to my homepage, and it would be easier for your new articles to get indexed by search engines if you display them on your homepage. I use this strategy whenever I have a new website.
I show 4 per page. Load time was my main concern.
Show them all - we want more John Chow!
I show 7, is a lucky number I guess =).
On my blog I show 20, but the load time is pretty bad.
Thanks John for getting me to think about this! I think I will reduce it to 5!
I show anything modified or posted within the month - generally 12 to 15 articles.
I have no reason - I just picked it out a long time ago and stuck with it. Dunno how the readers feel, but google seems to like it.
I do 6 but 10 is way to much.
I think 10 posts are more than enough.
5 is a good amount. If people are really interested in past content there is always the archives as well as the older posts link at the bottom of the page. With long posts you might lose readers interests at more than 5
I show 7 per page. I typically post once a day, but when I have a sponsored post I’ll have two posts that day. I don’t like to leave the sponsored one up as the top post. I don’t know that there’s a real good reason behind the number 7, but it feels about right.
I remember when you had a lot more on the front page, and I thought that it was pretty long, but I’d be reading and then look over at the scroll bar and look how far down I was. If you’ve got the readers attention, it probably doesn’t matter how many are on the front page.
3.
If you have your 300×250 Google ad embedded in the “loop” of the index.html file, then only 3 ads will show at any given time.
With that low number, I make sure my archives section is visible so viewers can go back and read the last week if they missed it.
I do just the same, great minds think alike it seems. If the articles are substantial then I believe 3 posts are more than ample.
I used to have 30 posts on http://zedomax.com. Like you said, I had to try to lower the load average for the server and now it’s down to about 9 posts. But for starting blogs, I do recommend 30.
I typically have the last 3 days worth of posts on my front page. Typically, that seems like the sweet spot for me so far, but I may tweak this a little bit more as I understand my readers a bit more.
Hey John, you should really write about the new Knols Project by Google and how QuarterWiki will piggyback on their effot…lol…
20, 15, 10 are way too much, I only post 5 myself.
My reasoning behind it, apart from load time considerations, is to also not give my readers everything all at once. I find that a lot of my hits go beyond the front page, often picking up older articles..
Would it be valid to say that showing more posts on the front page would increase keyword exposure to search engines?
I doubt it. The variety of keywords would be too great to have any proper targeting.
~ Dave
7 posts on front the page.
</I tested this number on many different niches and simply is the best number for me. Feel free to experiment this you will see some good results.