How Many Entries Should Show On Your Blog Homepage?
The question in the title of this entry is a very important one that all bloggers should answer. But any answer given can be refuted by another blogger. So how many posted entries should you display on the main page of your blog?
In yesterday's post about using a blog CMS to manage a regular website, I talked about setting the number of visible blog entries to zero - or one, if you are featuring the day's post. But for everyone else, the number should probably be: at least 5, with some exceptions.
If your blog is picture or graphics-heavy, for heaven's sake, don't allow for 50 posts. I used to read several dozen cooking blogs daily, until I got sick of the download time, waiting for pictures that I'd already seen. Take some time to learn a little bit about your blogging platform, or befriend a geek and beg their help.
If you have no graphics at all, or very few, you might consider 7-12 posts visible at any given time on the main page. However, consider that if your posts are relatively long, you may lose readers who only have time to skim. In this case, you should set up your blog to show only an excerpt of each post on the main page. Then you can probably get away with15-20 excerpted posts.
The excerpting method is pretty standard on platforms such as WordPress and MovableType. Blogger.com does have a tutorial on how to accomplish it on their platform; however, I implemented it and it did not work consistently on all browsers and I just gave up on bothering.
Another aspect of keeping the number of visible posts down is ad revenue. If you regularly write interesting articles (of course you do), then no doubt you are getting pageviews. By reducing the number of main-page posts, readers are induced into viewing more of your pages, motivated by your fine writing. If your blog is highly successful, you probably aren't reading this blog. But if you are heading that way, then consider that some advertisers pay for high volumes of legitimate pageviews.
Whatever the reason you're blogging in the first place, just don't let your main show more than 20 entries at a time, excerpted or not.
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
In yesterday's post about using a blog CMS to manage a regular website, I talked about setting the number of visible blog entries to zero - or one, if you are featuring the day's post. But for everyone else, the number should probably be: at least 5, with some exceptions.
If your blog is picture or graphics-heavy, for heaven's sake, don't allow for 50 posts. I used to read several dozen cooking blogs daily, until I got sick of the download time, waiting for pictures that I'd already seen. Take some time to learn a little bit about your blogging platform, or befriend a geek and beg their help.
If you have no graphics at all, or very few, you might consider 7-12 posts visible at any given time on the main page. However, consider that if your posts are relatively long, you may lose readers who only have time to skim. In this case, you should set up your blog to show only an excerpt of each post on the main page. Then you can probably get away with15-20 excerpted posts.
The excerpting method is pretty standard on platforms such as WordPress and MovableType. Blogger.com does have a tutorial on how to accomplish it on their platform; however, I implemented it and it did not work consistently on all browsers and I just gave up on bothering.
Another aspect of keeping the number of visible posts down is ad revenue. If you regularly write interesting articles (of course you do), then no doubt you are getting pageviews. By reducing the number of main-page posts, readers are induced into viewing more of your pages, motivated by your fine writing. If your blog is highly successful, you probably aren't reading this blog. But if you are heading that way, then consider that some advertisers pay for high volumes of legitimate pageviews.
Whatever the reason you're blogging in the first place, just don't let your main show more than 20 entries at a time, excerpted or not.
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/
