About Reading settings in WordPress you determine which content appears on your homepage, how many posts are displayed on blog and archive pages, and which content WordPress provides via its feeds. You will also find an important setting here for Search engine visibility of your website.
Right after a new WordPress installation, you should check this area. A misconfigured homepage is usually noticeable right away. In contrast, an accidentally activated search engine visibility setting can go unnoticed for a long time and negatively affect the indexing of your website.
Important: Before the public launch of your website, be sure to check the search engine visibility settings. An option set during development to discourage search engines should not remain accidentally enabled on a publicly accessible website.
Where do you find the reading settings in WordPress? #
First, log in to the WordPress admin area. This can usually be found at the following address:
your-domain.ch/wp-admin/
Then open in the left menu:
Settings > Reading
There you will find the settings for the display of your homepage, the number of posts, feeds, and visibility for search engines.
If you haven't fully checked your WordPress basic configuration yet, we also recommend our guides on the general WordPress settings and the Writing Settings in WordPress.
What should be displayed on the WordPress home page? #
You can find one of the most important settings under Your homepage shows. WordPress basically offers you two options:
- Your latest posts
- A static page
Which setting is correct depends on what kind of website you run.
Option 1: Your latest posts #
If you Your latest posts you select, WordPress automatically displays your newest blog posts on the homepage.
This variant is particularly suitable for websites where current posts represent the actual main content. This can include, for example, classic blogs, news websites, or other heavily editorial-driven projects.
With each newly published post, WordPress automatically updates the list. The newest post usually appears before older posts.
For a classic corporate website, on the other hand, this setting is usually not the best choice, because a custom-designed homepage is typically used there.
Option 2: A static page #
For corporate websites, club pages, restaurants, service providers, portfolios, and many other websites, a static homepage usually the more sensible option.
With this, you can set a normal WordPress page as your homepage and design it independently of your blog posts.
You could, for example, create a page titled Home create and then save them under:
Settings > Reading > Your homepage displays > A static page
as Home page select.
Recommendation: For a typical corporate, club, or service website, you should generally use a static page as your homepage. This allows you to specifically design the starting page for your company, your services, and your visitors.
Homepage and posts page are two different pages #
If you are using a static homepage and want to run a blog at the same time, you can additionally use a separate Post page determine.
A typical setup would be, for example:
- Home Page: Home
- Post page: Blog
Your website could then be, for example, at:
deine-domain.ch/
display the normal home page while your blog posts are at:
your-domain.ch/blog/
be listed.
To do this, you first create two pages, for example Home and Blog. Then you instruct her under Settings > Reading to the corresponding functions.
You don't have to fill the posts page like a normal page #
A common beginner's mistake is trying to design the page set as the posts page like a normal WordPress page.
If a page in the reading settings as Post page defined, WordPress uses them as placeholders for the post overview. The display of the posts is then mainly determined by the active theme or its templates.
Therefore, content that you enter directly into the normal page editor of this post page will, depending on the theme, not be displayed as you would expect from a standard page.
Note: If you want to create a custom-designed blog overview, the procedure can vary depending on the theme or page builder you are using. The WordPress posts page and a freely designed page with its own post query are not technically necessarily the same thing.
What happens if the desired page is not available for selection? #
If you cannot select a certain page as your homepage or posts page, first check whether this page has already been created and published.
You can create new pages at:
Pages > Add page
After the page has been published, you can go back to Settings > Reading switch and select them there.
We explain in detail how pages are generally created and managed in our guide. Create new pages in WordPress.
Blog pages show a maximum of #
With the setting Blog pages show a maximum of you determine how many posts WordPress should display simultaneously on a post overview page.
By default, WordPress often uses a value of 10 posts.
Whether this value makes sense for your website depends on the design and scope of your posts. If your theme displays large featured images and extensive previews, fewer posts per page can make it look cleaner. With a more compact layout, more posts may also make sense.
You could, for example, set:
10
Then WordPress displays a maximum of ten posts on the corresponding overview page before older posts can be accessed via additional pagination pages.
More posts are not automatically better #
It can be tempting to display a large number of posts on a blog page at once. However, that is not necessarily advisable.
Depending on the theme, each additional post can load further texts, images, and other elements. An extremely long post overview can thus become cluttered and increase the amount of data to be transferred.
For many websites, approximately 6 to 12 posts per overview page a sensible starting point. However, your layout, the length of the previews, and the needs of your visitors are crucial.
Newsfeeds show the latest entries #
WordPress provides RSS and feed functions by default. Via the setting News feeds show the latest you determine how many recent posts such a feed should contain.
A typical value is, for example:
10
RSS feeds are used less visibly by regular website visitors today than in the past, but they remain an integral part of WordPress and can be processed by feed readers, aggregators, or other services.
Show for every post in a feed #
For WordPress feeds, you can specify whether the entire text of a post or just a Excerpt to be output.
The two options are:
- Full text
- Excerpt
At Full text can the full post content be provided in the feed? In Excerpt if the feed instead contains only a shortened version of the post.
For many websites Excerpt a sensible attitude. Readers get an overview of the content and can visit the website for the full post.
Info This setting affects the WordPress feed. It does not automatically determine whether your theme displays full posts or excerpts on the normal blog page.
Search engine visibility: a particularly important setting #
At the bottom of the reading settings you will find the section Search engine visibility.
There is the option:
Prevent search engines from indexing this website
This setting deserves special attention.
When activated, WordPress instructs search engines not to index the website. WordPress sets appropriate technical signals for this purpose, which are intended to prevent search engines from including the pages in their search index.
For a publicly accessible website that should be found via Google, Bing or other search engines, this option should normally not activated to be.
Warning: If your website is publicly accessible and you want it to be found in search engines, make sure to check that „Discourage search engines from indexing this site“ is not enabled.
Is this setting secure access protection? #
No. The option for search engine visibility is no access protection and does not make your website private.
With this, WordPress merely points out to search engines that the website should not be indexed. Search engines ultimately decide for themselves how they handle such instructions.
Anyone who knows your website's address can still access it in their browser, provided you haven't set up additional access protection.
Therefore, if a staging or testing website really should not be publicly accessible, you should use real access protection and not rely solely on this WordPress setting.
When can it be useful to block search engines? #
During the development of a new website, it can be useful to temporarily prevent search engines from indexing it. This is intended to prevent unfinished pages or placeholder content from appearing in search results prematurely.
The problem often occurs during a later go-live: the website is published, but the setting remains accidentally activated.
If your website does not appear in search engines after launch, the setting belongs under Settings > Reading > Search engine visibility therefore among the first points you should check.
Recommendation: Include control of search engine visibility in your go-live checklist. This single checkbox is quick to verify and should not be forgotten for a publicly indexable website.
Why doesn't my website appear immediately on Google despite the option being disabled? #
If the option to discourage search engines is disabled, it does not mean that your website will appear in search results immediately.
Search engines must first discover and crawl your website and decide which pages are included in the index. This process can take time.
Furthermore, there are numerous other technical and content-related factors that can influence whether a specific URL gets indexed. The WordPress search engine visibility setting is therefore only one part of the technical prerequisites.
An XML sitemap and clean internal linking can help search engines discover your website's structure and content.
Reading settings for a new corporate website #
For a typical WordPress business website, a sensible basic configuration could look like this, for example:
- Your homepage shows: A static page
- Home Page: your individually created home page
- Post page: Blog or news, if available
- Blog pages show a maximum of: about 6 to 12 posts, depending on the layout
- Newsfeeds for example 10 entries
- Feed view: Excerpt
- Block search engines: disabled on a publicly indexable live website
These values are not mandatory requirements. However, they form a sensible starting point for many corporate, club, and service websites.
Save changes and check the website #
After you have adjusted your reading settings, click below on Save changes.
Then open your website in a new browser tab and check in particular:
- Is the desired home page displayed?
- Is the blog or posts page accessible?
- Are the posts displayed as expected?
- Is the search engine visibility setting correct for your website's current status?
If you are using a cache, it may be necessary to clear it when changes are made to the display before you can see the new result.
What should you configure next? #
According to the reading settings, you should Discussion settings in WordPress check. There you determine, among other things, whether visitors are allowed to leave comments, how comments are moderated, and what rules WordPress uses for discussions.
Following are the Media settings and in particular the Permalink settings in WordPress. You should set the permalink structure for a new website as early as possible because it affects the URLs of your content.
Conclusion #
Reading settings determine several core features of your WordPress website. Particularly important are the choice between a dynamic post archive and a static front page, as well as the correct assignment of a separate posts page.
For a classic corporate website, a static homepage is usually the appropriate choice. If you also run a blog, you can set a separate posts page for it.
Special attention deserves the attitude „Prevent search engines from indexing this website“. While it can be useful during development, it should not accidentally remain enabled on a publicly accessible live website.
Recommendation: Check the reading settings at the latest before your WordPress website goes live. In doing so, check not only the correct homepage and posts page, but expressly also the visibility for search engines.
