limit number of post on front page only

Try this: http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-define-how-many-post-to-display-per-page 🙂

try:

<?php
$page_num = $paged;
if ($pagenum='') $pagenum =1;
query_posts('cat=1&showposts=7&paged='.$page_num); ?>
               	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
                // WordPress loop
                endwhile;endif; ?>

Where the query_posts cat=1 is set to the category ID that you want to pull from.

Excellent! You are most welcome…

I commented out these two lines of code in index.php:

<?php $countervariable=1; if (have_posts()) : ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

I added this: (from the url mentioned above in second post)

<?php
$page_num = $paged;
if ($pagenum='') $pagenum =1;
query_posts('showposts=7&amp;paged='.$page_num); ?>
               	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
                // WordPress loop
                endwhile;endif; ?>

On home page I an getting ERROR:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /home/my/path/to/blog/index.php on line 77

Anybody can help? (I tested with default theme too. But same error)

thanks.