Wordpress - limit number of articles on home page

Using wordpress, the latest version, how do I limit the number of articles on the home page (index.php)?

Lets say I only want 5 articles on the home page. When I publish that 6th article, I want article 1 to be moved off the front page and only appear in the category it was published under.

So when I have 50 articles published, 45 will be in the categories and 5 will be in the home page, and so on.

 

there is a option is settings if you are using WP version 2.5 where you can limit the number of posts. Default number of posts are 10. You can change it whatever you want... the old ones will go under their respective categories then by default..

 

Setting => Reading => change the number you see on the page.

 

Using Wordpress how can you limit the articles just on the Main Index Template?
If one wanted to show only 5 articles on the home page and the regular 10 on the rest?

 

It will not work in default WP theme.Individual Pages can be set to use a specific custom Page Template.
WordPress can be configured to use different Page Templates for different Pages.

 

There is one option where you need to set up that how many posts you want to show on index.php page. Mostly blogger show 10 posts on home page.. you can set up, just go through Setting > Reading

 

Yep, version 3.1 still has the option available under settings->reading on the admin page. Enter a number in the field that says "blog pages show at most_____".