I'm excited to share this series with you, called "101 Blogging Tips". In the series there will be 101 blogging tips that you can begin applying to your blog today! Don't wait, get started now!

Tip #51: Set the Number of Posts to Show on Home Page

Previously in the 101 Blogging Tips series, we discussed tools to help diagnose your site's loading time, however here is a quick tip to help improve it – set the number of posts on the home page.

Mine is set to 10.  I am using 10 as an example in these instructions but you can set it to whatever you are comfortable with as 5 may be more appropriate if you write really long posts or those with a lot of pictures (pictures take longer to load), or 15 may be better if you write a few sentences or paragraphs.  

To find the most acceptable setting for your site, choose a setting, then go to this tip and go to the diagnosis tools and see how long it takes your site to load, and in testing diferent values and re-running the test, determine what the maximum number of posts that can be displayed on the home page without it slowing down the load time.

Again, we are using 10 as an example. To set yours:

• In TypePad, go to Settings, Posts, and then Posts to Display. Set both to 10 (10 to show in recent posts, 10 to show on Archive pages).
• In Blogger (new Blogger Interface), go to Settings, Post and Comments, and then under Posts, set the Show At Most to 10.
• In WordPress, go to Settings, and Reading. Set blog pages to show at most to 10. You can also set the feed max as well while in there.

The point is that whatever number is set, it affects your loading time as all posts (set to show on the main page) have to be "loaded".  For most, the last thing to load is the right sidebar (using a 2 column format, most set the sidebar on the right side, allowing their posts to load first on the left). Note: The page loads from left to right.  So basically you don't want this number to be too high! I would not recommend over 20. 

Happy blogging and have a great weekend!