WordPress--post only latest 1 or 2 or 3 posts on homepage

How do I just display the latest post on home (not the wh开发者_如何学Goole archive as wp does by default)? And how can I influence that it has/not date, category, read more, etc?

WP manual does not explain this clearly. Or does it? If yes, please tell me where?

Thank you guys! And girls!

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The new Wordpress Themes have child themes, it is a new way to organize and simplify upgrading themes, but it can be a pain because they are not as easy to modify as older themes. Anyway, there is the old way:

You can use the settings in the Administration Page to set your homepage to display only one post (Settings / Reading / Blog pages show at most -> 1 post). But if you want just your home to display one post, and decide you want your archives to display the basic 10 posts, you can edit your theme template to use this function:

<?php query_posts('posts_per_page=1'); ?>

Function Reference/query posts
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/query_posts

To be sure no date or category is displayed, you also have to edit the template and remove the corresponding php code (in the loop, you should look for these functions:

<?php the_category(); ?>
<?php the_date(); ?>

Function Reference/the category
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_category

Function Reference/the date
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_date

To use the new way, you have to create a child theme to your theme, and override the loop by creating your own loop.

Chld Themes
http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes