Awenthomas

Assuming the number of posts on the home page would be different to the number of posts per page in Settings->Reading, you would need to use a custom query in your theme’s home page template file.
you could just use query_posts to create a custom query and specify the showposts parameter with a value of “5” (or whatever number you wish). using the query_posts function:

<?php query_posts('showposts=5'); if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

	<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
	<p>?php the_time(); ?></p>
	<?php the_content(); ?>
	<p><?php the_tags(); ?></p>

<?php endwhile;?>

	<p><?php next_posts_link(); ?></p>
	<p><?php previous_posts_link(); ?></p>

<?php else : ?>

	<h1>Not Found</h1>
	<p>Silly monkey.</p>

<?php endif; wp_reset_query(); ?>

To get rid of the “page 1 of 2” at the bottom of the home page?

– snap into your theme files and delete the code that shows previous/next. i did exactly same for my blog , you can checkout here http://www.fixithere.net/sky-customer-service/

I experimented with the value of width % parameter – no effect at all. What am I doing wrong?