Increase the # of Recent Posts shown on page.

How can I increase the # of Recent Posts shown on page…
… the sidebar only displays 10 recent posts

Are you concerned with the number of posts on a page, or the number of recent posts shown in the sidebar?

A) Dasboard > Settings > Reading > Blog pages show at most

…set to whatever you want.

B) If you use a widget to display recent posts, edit the widget post count. Appearance > Widgets > Recent Posts > edit > 15 posts max.
If you really need to hack that to make it 25, look for this in widgets.php

$options = get_option('widget_recent_entries');
	$title = empty($options['title']) ? __('Recent Posts') : apply_filters('widget_title', $options['title']);
	if ( !$number = (int) $options['number'] )
		$number = 10;
	else if ( $number < 1 )
		$number = 1;
	else if ( $number > 15 )
		$number = 15;

…change 15 to 25, and then go back to the widget in the sidebar and set that to 25 as well. Don’t forget to back up your files, and if you hack widgets.php, bear in mind that it could be overwritten at some point during a future upgrade.

It’s a drag and drop widgets interface…

Same here. WP 2.7.1 default install on a test server. Once you add the recent posts widget to the selected sidebar, the “edit” link should appear in the widget title. (I just this minute retested that to be absolutely sure) Click “edit”, and the widget drop down then gives you options to rename the widget and select the number of posts it shows.

Now that is an oddity I can not explain. Take a look at all of your available widgets. Is there more than one widget available for “Recent Posts”?

…and secondly, does the “edit” link appear on any of your other activated widgets (currently positioned in a sidebar)?

I’m officially stumped. The only thing I can think of is to remove all the sidebar widgets, let the theme go back to it’s default, save the changes, then go back and see if re-adding them again makes any difference. Sorry I wasn’t any real help on this one.

Good luck to you.

Just for the heck of it, have you tried disabling your plugins to see if it has any effect? I know it sounds far-fetched, but I just did some reading that seemed to suggest that on occasion, a plugin can cause interference with the ability to move or edit sidebar widgets. Just more food for thought.