Just from django.core.paginator import Paginator and make a paginator object as p = Paginator(thestuff, 7) in the view for the homepage, p = Paginator(thestuff, 10) everywhere else. Then in either case bind p in the context you use to render the template. p.object_list will be set appropriately in either case (and you appear to say that's the approach you're using, right? I.e., is that what you mean by "Django's object_list"?).
Django docs have excellent details and examples (assuming you're on 1.0 or better). If you can't make it work, can you show us (a simplified version that still fails, of) your template and view code?
Edit: problem has now been clearly shown and I think should be solved by subclassing Django's core paginator, as follows:
from django.core.paginator import Paginator, Page
class MyPaginator(Paginator):
def __init__(self, **kw):
self.deltafirst = kw.pop('deltafirst', 0)
Paginator.__init__(self, **kw)
def page(self, number):
"Returns a Page object for the given 1-based page number."
number = self.validate_number(number)
if number == 1:
bottom = 0
top = self.per_page - self.deltafirst
else:
bottom = (number - 1) * self.per_page - self.deltafirst
top = bottom + self.per_page
if top + self.orphans >= self.count:
top = self.count
return Page(self.object_list[bottom:top], number, self)
Now use MyPaginator exactly as the above text and examples show the usage of Django's own, except, on creating it, use an extra named argument deltafirst=3 to make the first page 3 shorter than the normal per-page length (of 10). So you'd be using a single paginator with a nominal length of 10 but a deltafirst of 3 to make the first page 3 shorter than all others.
(There may be problems in validate_number but I'm not sure they'd appear -- if they do, then MyPaginator will need to override that method as well).