Displaying a fixed number of posts in WordPress without Pagination

Scenario: Settings > Reading set to show 10 (or whatever number, doesn’t matter) latest blog posts (WordPress default).

And you want to display just 3 Posts without links to next sets of paginated pages.

So let’s just add this in functions.php:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'be_change_home_posts_per_page' );
/**
 * Change Posts Per Page for Posts page
 *
 * @author Bill Erickson
 * @link http://www.billerickson.net/customize-the-wordpress-query/
 * @param object $query data
 *
 */
function be_change_home_posts_per_page( $query ) {

	if( $query->is_main_query() && !is_admin() && is_home() ) {
		$query->set( 'posts_per_page', '3' );
	}

}

Simple, right?

Apparently, that is not sufficient. When you reload your Posts page (the front page or the homepage, in this case) you’ll find that while only 3 Posts are displayed, pagination will continue to appear.

By setting no_found_rows to true, we can truly retrieve a fixed number of posts thus getting rid of the pagination.

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'be_change_home_posts_per_page' );
/**
 * Change Posts Per Page for Posts page
 *
 * @author Bill Erickson
 * @link http://www.billerickson.net/customize-the-wordpress-query/
 * @param object $query data
 *
 */
function be_change_home_posts_per_page( $query ) {

	if( $query->is_main_query() && !is_admin() && is_home() ) {
		$query->set( 'posts_per_page', '3' );
		$query->set( 'no_found_rows', true );
	}

}