Knowledgebase
How to configure the reading settings in WordPress
To access and configure the reading settings in WordPress, log into the admin panel and go to Settings menu>Reading sub-menu.
At the top of the page that opens there is a group of options labeled Front page displays. It consists of a couple of radio buttons and two drop-down menus. By default, the radio button Your latest posts is selected; in this way the most recent posts are displayed on the homepage of your site. In case you want the homepage to be a static page mark the radio button A static page and select one of the pages that you've created from the drop-down menu Front page. If the front page is a static page but you still want to have a separate page that displays the most recent posts, select that page from the Posts page drop-down menu.
Pages that list your posts (e.g. the front page, category pages, tag pages, etc.) show ten posts per page. If you want to change that number just type it in the text field for Blog pages show at most.
On the Reading Settings screen in the admin panel there are also a couple of options connected with RSS feeds. By default, each feed shows the ten most recent posts. To change this type the number in the field for Syndication feeds show the most recent. The option under it is For each article in a feed, show. It's set to Full text which means that each post in a feed is shown with its full content. You can set it to show only a summary of the post by marking the Summary radio button.
With the option Search Engine Visibility you can control whether search engines should index your site. If you want your site to be indexed by search engines, unmark the checkbox Discourage search engines from indexing this site. This also enables the option for update services (it can be manage from Settings menu>Writing sub-menu). If you mark this checkbox, search engines will ignore your site and the option for update services will be disabled.
For some more information and screenshots you can check out the tutorial on how to manage the reading settings in WordPress.