How to Show Total Number of Posts in WordPress

Want to make your WordPress blog more engaging and trustworthy? We’ve found that showing the total number of posts in WordPress is a simple tweak that can make a real difference.

Displaying your total number of posts can help showcase the consistency of your blog and encourages users to look for more content.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily display total number of posts in WordPress.

Why Display the Total Number of Posts in WordPress?

If you’ve published a lot of articles, showing the total number of posts in WordPress is an effective way to display social proof.

It shows website visitors that you’re consistent with publishing new content and that you have a lot of experience on the topic that you write about. This can help boost trust with your visitors and encourage them to become loyal readers and subscribers.

Showing the total number of posts can also encourage visitors to stay on your site longer. If they know that you have tons of other articles they can read, they’ll be more likely to stick around and check them out.

With that said, we’ll show you two different methods for displaying the total number of posts in WordPress. You can use the quick links below to jump right to the method you want to use.

Method 1: Show Total Number of Posts in WordPress Using a Plugin

This method is easier and recommended for all users.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Simple Blog Stats plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation you need to visit Settings » Simple Blog Stats to configure plugin settings.

Simple Blog Stats plugin shows you useful WordPress stats like total number of comments, users, pages and posts. You can easily display these stats using shortcodes anywhere on your WordPress site.

Simply copy the [sbs_posts] shortcode and add it to any WordPress post, page, or shortcode enabled sidebar widget.

It will show the total number of published posts on your WordPress site.

You can also use [sbs_blog_stats] which will show all blog stats including the total number of posts.

Method 2. Manually Display Total Number of Posts in WordPress

This method requires you to add code to your WordPress site. If you haven’t done this before, then take a look at our guide on how to copy and paste code in WordPress.

First, you need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a code snippets plugin.

function wpb_total_posts() { 
$total = wp_count_posts()->publish;
echo 'Total Posts: ' . $total;
} 

This code will simply output the total number of posts whenever the template tag wpb_total_posts is called.

The easiest way to add this code in WordPress is by using a code snippets plugin like WPCode. It lets you safely add code without editing your theme’s functions.php file, so you don’t need to worry about breaking your site.

To get started, you need to install and activate the free WPCode plugin. If you need help, follow our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, go to Code Snippets » + Add Snippet from the WordPress dashboard. On the Add Snippet page, find the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option and click the ‘Use snippet’ button underneath it.

Next, add a title for your snippet and paste the code from above into the ‘Code Preview’ box. Don’t forget to also choose ‘PHP Snippet’ as the code type from the dropdown list on the right.

After that, simply toggle the switch from ‘Inactive’ to ‘Active’ and click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

Once that’s done, you need to add <?php wpb_total_posts(); ?> in your theme files where you want to display total number of posts.

If you don’t want to use the template tag, then you can create and use a shortcode that does exactly the same thing.

Copy and paste the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or a code snippets plugin to create a shortcode:

function wpb_total_posts() { 
$total = wp_count_posts()->publish;
return $total; 
} 
add_shortcode('total_posts','wpb_total_posts');

You can follow the same steps as above to easily add this code using the WPCode plugin.

Now you can use the shortcode [total_posts] to display total number of posts in any posts, pages, or sidebar widgets.

We hope this article helped you learn how to show total number of posts in WordPress. You may also want to see our mega list of most wanted WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks or our picks of the best related posts plugins for WordPress.

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