Discussion: How Many is Too Many Per Page?

How many is too many news/blog articles per page?

Just imagine, you visit a blog site and start reading the articles.  At what point does the next button appear too early on the page? Or at what point is the abundance of articles overwhelming?

It’s a matter of personal opinion. I doubt there’s a study out there that tells the ideal amount of entries that should be displayed per page. But I could be wrong.

If you include the comic on the homepage, Dueling Analogs displays 6 posts on it’s main page and 5 on each sequential page. On the other hand, the average gaming webcomic displays only 1 post on the main page and 1 on each page that follows as well. With that said Dueling Analogs is also considered a gaming blog as well. And top gaming blogs like Joystiq and ShackNews both displays 15 posts per page. While Kotaku displays a whopping 40.

So here’s the question: How many is too many news/blog articles per page? Or to a lesser degree: How many is too few?

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5 Comments
May 26, 2010

Discussion (5)¬

  1. Moongoat says:
    May 26, 2010 at 12:34 pm #

    I don’t like next buttons at all…

    For people that feel the same: =D
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/

  2. Scott says:
    May 26, 2010 at 12:58 pm #

    Over at digitalsomething we do 10 news post per page. Seems to work well for us, I suppose it depends onhow long your blog posts usually are though.

  3. Dachaz says:
    May 26, 2010 at 1:31 pm #

    I’m a huge fan of new wave of blogs that automagically load next page when you scroll down to where “next page” link would be.
    So, unlimited scroll, ftw!

  4. Phaelin says:
    May 26, 2010 at 3:38 pm #

    Preferably, as many as the web designer can manage. When I’m reading along, I don’t usually like to stop to load the next page. For places that are just image blogs (ICHC, Halolz, etc.) somewhere around 20 would be great. There are a lot of places I don’t go to because you have to click next every five pictures. So, the more the better in my mind. I don’t really think there’s an “overwhelming” amount in an age where people revel in tons of information flying at us constantly.

  5. Luc Jones says:
    May 27, 2010 at 4:10 pm #

    I find 3s a good number or a number that requires me to not scroll too far depending on post length. The auto loading is good but I prefer to click for it. One of the joys about being on stupidly expensive 3g internets.