nboehr

By default, the gallery shortcode does not allow to limit the number of images displayed. This makes sense when you for example include all images attached to a post like this:
<pre><code>[gallery id="4"]
</code></pre>
When this plugin is activated, you may use:
<pre><code>[gallery id="4" limit="3"]
</code></pre>
and it will only display three images.
You can also use an offset parameter:
<pre><code>[gallery id="4" limit="3" offset="1"]
</code></pre>
Will display at most three images, starting at the second.
Note that this plugin is a little bit of a hack.

Limit parameter for gallery shortcode

Adds a limit parameter to the [gallery] shortcode.

kirilisa

Frontpage Manager allows you to customize how the posts appear on your frontpage in several different ways.
<ul>
<li>you can have the posts drawn from all categories or a subset of your choosing </li>
<li>you can choose how many posts should display (this is distinct from WordPress’ built-in Reading Settings which applies to all blog pages)</li>
<li>you can have each post limited in length by number of characters, words, or paragraphs</li>
<li>you can choose which HTML tags should be stripped from posts</li>
<li>you can specify a read more link, etc. if you like </li>
<li>you can hide the category in the page title, if you wish</li>
</ul>
The plugin will attempt to make sure that any tags that are interrupted by the post-limiting feature are matched so as not to cause formatting issues.
<h3>Compatibility</h3>
I have tested this plugin from WordPress 2.8.
<h3>Download</h3>
<a href="http://kirilisa.com/downloads/projects/wordpress/frontpage-manager_1.3.zip" title="Download version 1.3" rel="nofollow ugc">Version 1.3</a>

Frontpage Manager

Lets you customize how your frontpage and/or main posts page appears in a number of ways: limiting by category/ies, number of posts, number of words/c …

Limit parameter for gallery shortcode vs Frontpage Manager