WordPress Pagination is one of the most common yet very useful features of the majority of WordPress blogs. It is one of the basic and easy practices that help you to eliminate all of the content load on a single post. But if you do not use this feature, your website will take quite a long time to render.
With the help of pagination, you can create a more user-friendly website that can be easy to access and navigate. Even, there are some themes available that come with a built-in pagination feature. But the majority of the WordPress themes do not provide detailed WordPress Pagination options, which limited you to make changes or customizations.
But fortunately, there are some easy methods are available through which you can change or make customization WordPress pagination. You can either go with the WordPress pagination plugins that are the best option for casual users or advanced users, they can rely on custom codes.
In this article, you will get to know a few different best methods to implement WordPress pagination on your website.
Let us get started!
What is WordPress Pagination?
WordPress Pagination is a WordPress feature with the help of which you can split up your website’s content or blog posts into many separate pages. Let us understand with an example, suppose your website has more than 200 blog posts, and to make other blogs easy to access and navigate, you might need to configure your pagination settings to display 10 blog posts on each page. This will divide into 20 pages and each page will display 10 blog posts.
When a visitor is accessing your content, they can easily navigate to another page of the content by simply using the “Next” and “previous” buttons located at the bottom of your post. However, there are different ways through which you can display pagination on your website, such as using a number list of pages through which you can directly land on the specific page you want.
For your reference, you can look at what WordPress pagination looks like which is inbuilt and available in the default theme Twenty Twenty-one.
Another approach you can implement on the Pagination of a page is breaking a single long post into multiple pages, which will reduce the load on-page to render as well as enhance user experience.
In addition to that, you can even customize and make certain changes in pagination to have more control over it. In the coming sections, we will discuss how you can implement WordPress pagination with different methods and How it can be beneficial with some cons.
Why do you need to utilize WordPress Pagination?
WordPress pagination has been existing for quite a long time, but many users do not know exactly How WordPress pagination can advantage of their WordPress site. So, in this section, we will discuss and try to cover all the aspects of why you need to utilize WordPress pagination in your WordPress post.
WordPress pagination is used for the following five main reasons:
- To enhance user experience
- To improve crawlability
- To enhance overall website performance
- To reduce server load and loading time
- To generate revenues through advertising
Enhances User experience
One of the major advantages of using WordPress pagination on your website is that it makes navigation easier. A visitor can easily access your content without waiting for content to render and also enhances the overall user experience. Different WordPress themes offer you pagination features that have different options. Some of them allow you to only access the first and the last page and some will only allow you with the options “Previous” and “next”.
For example, in the WordPress default theme twenty twenty-one, you will find visitors can only navigate to the current page, older page, or the last page. But it does not provide you an option to jump on the consecutive next pages directly such as 2,3,4, or so on.
Just like you will find in the WPOven blog, in which visitors can easily navigate to multiple pages with the page links as shown below:
Improves crawlability
Implementing WordPress pagination provides a better area for Google bots to crawl your website. These bots will be able to gather more navigation links and improve overall SEO Crawlability. We know it has not a sign for SEO but even a slight performance improvement can make a difference.
Enhancing overall website performance
Implementing WordPress pagination on your websites can dramatically enhance the performance of your websites by reducing the amount of content required to load on each page.
Suppose, you are running a website with 10 blog posts and you have implemented all your 10 blogs on your main page. It will eventually slow down your website performance because all the data of blogs will start downloading at once.
But, if you have split 2 pages of 5 posts each with the help of WordPress pagination, the data load will be distributed and the page will load much faster than before.
If you want to learn more about Enhancing website performance, you can also check out our dedicated blog “22 Best Ways to Speed Up WordPress Performance” where we have completely explained the various tactics or methods to boost any website performance.
Reduces server load and loading time
Another reason, why you would implement WordPress pagination is to reduce the server load. The data for blog posts or content will load faster for a single page than downloading the data for all the blog posts or content at once. It is also a major factor that if the elements on a page are fewer, the faster the page loads. Combining all these factors is responsible for your user experience.
Generate revenues through advertising
The last and one of the pretty good reasons to use WordPress pagination is to increase revenues through advertisements on your website. You will find this strategy to generate revenue on various news websites or online articles. They usually use these tactics to increase page retention, areas for advertising, and the number of page views.
Since the major source of income for a news website is through advertising, they used to sell their website space for advertising, and to get more benefit out of it, they usually try to maximize the number of page views, so that they can implement as much advertising as they can. All this can only be possible by paginating their content into different pages.
You can also check out the dedicated blog on “How to monetize a blog” and learn different ways to generate revenues.
Pros and Cons of Paginating Your WordPress website
Now you know the main reason why Paginating can be helpful for you, let us get into the pros and cons of using it.
Pros
- Helps in to maintain layouts in fixed-size blogs.
- Increases Advertisement space.
- Increases Impressions or pageviews
- Better for Image-based content
- Convert longer posts Easy to digest
- can target different keywords on diff pages.
Cons
- An increase in page views will also lower the user retention rate.
- Too much advertisement and little content will be considered as low content length.
- Readers prefer to read articles or posts in one go, without going to the next page.
- Not suitable for users with a slow internet connection or mobile users.
- Need to consider SEO while pagination or else it can harm your ranking.
- No total social share counting is possible, each page will have its URL
How you can setup WordPress Pagination in your site Manually
Although different methods are available with the help of which you can easily set up pagination on your WordPress site, to begin with, first, we will cover the manual method and in the coming sections, you will get to know how can you customize WordPress pagination using custom codes and with the help of WordPress plugins.
Now, let us see how you can use the default options for pagination on the WordPress theme twenty twenty-one.
In the WordPress themes, you usually find that WordPress is set to show only 10 posts per page by default. i.e if your website has 30 posts, it means it will have 3 total pages and each page will display only 10 posts.
However, you can also change these settings as per your requirements. To do this, all you need to do is to go Settings > Reading and make the changes as per your need.
However, there are multiple options are also there in website builders such as Elementor or Default theme page builders, with the help of which you can further customize and adjust your pages.
But if you are a technical person and comfortable with editing or making minor changes to your site, there are a lot of things you can do with pagination with the help of CSS and PHP.
But before making any changes or editing your theme files, make sure you have a WordPress child theme available if not you must create one. It is because, whatever you make some changes to your theme file, it should not get vanished or be overwritten the next time you update your theme. If you do not know how to create a WordPress child theme, you can read our detailed article on WordPress child themes, which will help you out. Another, thing you should keep in mind is to make a complete backup of your website before proceeding to edit theme files
Now, if you like to add pagination to your site without using the default option, you can do it manually by adding the following code into your theme’s function.PHP file. However, for genesis Framework users, no need to add this code.
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function wpoven_post_pagination_nav() { if( is_singular() ) return; global $wp_query; /** Stop executing if there is only single post */ if( $wp_query->max_num_pages <= 1 ) return; $paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ) ? absint( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) : 1; $max = intval( $wp_query->max_num_pages ); /** Add current page to the array */ if ( $paged >= 1 ) $links[] = $paged; /** Add the pages around the current page to the array */ if ( $paged >= 3 ) { $links[] = $paged - 1; $links[] = $paged - 2; } if ( ( $paged + 2 ) <= $max ) { $links[] = $paged + 2; $links[] = $paged + 1; } echo '<div class="navigation"><ul>' . "\n"; /** Previous Post Link */ if ( get_previous_posts_link() ) printf( '<li>%s</li>' . "\n", get_previous_posts_link() ); /** Link to first page, plus ellipses if necessary */ if ( ! in_array( 1, $links ) ) { $class = 1 == $paged ? ' class="active"' : ''; printf( '<li%s><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' . "\n", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( 1 ) ), '1' ); if ( ! in_array( 2, $links ) ) echo '<li>…</li>'; } /** Link to current page, plus 2 pages in either direction if necessary */ sort( $links ); foreach ( (array) $links as $link ) { $class = $paged == $link ? ' class="active"' : ''; printf( '<li%s><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' . "\n", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $link ) ), $link ); } /** Link to last page */ if ( ! in_array( $max, $links ) ) { if ( ! in_array( $max - 1, $links ) ) echo '<li>…</li>' . "\n"; $class = $paged == $max ? ' class="active"' : ''; printf( '<li%s><a href="%s">%s</a></li>' . "\n", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $max ) ), $max ); } /** Next Post Link */ if ( get_next_posts_link() ) printf( '<li>%s</li>' . "\n", get_next_posts_link() ); echo '</ul></div>' . "\n"; } |
Now, you will be able to have a complete list of numbered pages, it is time to style them. For this, we have provided you with a styling code that will make the list look like a series of blocks in which the current page will be highlighted with a different background color. To make this happen, add the following code in your theme’s stycle.css file.
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.navigation li a, .navigation li a:hover, .navigation li.active a, .navigation li.disabled { color: #fff; text-decoration:none; } .navigation li { display: inline; } .navigation li a, .navigation li a:hover, .navigation li.active a, .navigation li.disabled { background-color: #000080; border-radius: 3px; cursor: pointer; padding: 12px; padding: 0.75rem; } .navigation li a:hover, .navigation li.active a { background-color: #ADD8E6; } |
Note: We highly recommend you make the changes and check out the effects only on a staging platform first. After finalizing the edits and changes, then you can apply these on your live website.
You might also need to add more code or change settings depending on the theme you are using. Here we are just showing you an example.
However, if the manual method is not your cup of tea, you are always welcome to use WordPress plugins instead. There are multiple WordPress pagination plugins are available with the help of which you will be able to easily paginate your posts. let us check them out!
Best WordPress Pagination Plugins
WordPress Pagination Plugins are one of the best alternatives to manual methods that provide more control over your site’s pagination easily. Let us check out some of the best WordPress Pagination plugins available!
1. WP-PageNavi
WP-PageNavi is one of the most famous and widely used WordPress Pagination plugins available. The best part about this plugin is, it is available completely free and this is the main reason why a majority of the users have been using it. It provides you with a simple and easy solution to paginate your website with full control over the behavior of your WordPress site pagination.
Some features of WP-PageNavi
- Completely Free
- Loaded with a lot of customization options
- Best for SEO
- Better Navigation options
- Looks great and modern
Pricing and Plans of WP-PageNavi
WP-PageNavi is also open-source software that is available free to use and install from the WordPress repository.
How do the Installation and Setup look like?
The installation of WP-PageNavi is quite simple. It would be best if you went to the ‘Plugins’ section in your admin panel. Search for the ‘WP-PageNavi’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ button. This way, the plugin will be successfully installed on your WordPress; after installing, press the ‘Activate’ button beside the plugin. The whole installation and activation process is the same for all the WordPress plugins available on the WordPress repository.
After you are done with the installation and activation part, you’ll find the plugin settings, in the Settings option as shown in the picture below:
WP-PageNavi updates and Reviews
We checked with WP-PageNavi updates and customer reviews in the WordPress directory and the kind of updates their developer has been pushing and found the following results for its version – 2.94.0.
- It has 700000 + active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 5 days ago. [ Regularly updated ]
- It has been currently tested up to 5.9.5.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is Average Rating 4.7/5. 120 users out of 140 gave it 5 stars.
WP-PageNav Review
Summary
We found WP-PageNav, not so easy to use. Users find it difficult to use especially those users who do not know How to code and deal with these files. Apart from this, the whole plugin installation setup process was smooth and seamless. One thing you must keep in mind is that it will be very difficult to use with old themes which do not support it and it can be very tricky to implement. However, The core plugin provides plenty of areas to explore and implement without any cost.
2. WP-Paginate
WP-Paginate is an open-source plugin that offers multiple customization options and is also one of the most popular WordPress pagination plugins available so far. It is a very flexible plugin that offers better navigation options on WordPress sites.
In addition to it, it also helps to increase the overall user experience for your visitors. Since user experience is one of the major factors that improve your SEO by providing you with more options to add links to your content. Even you can add custom CSS for your pagination links by going to your WP-Paginate Setting > Custom CSS tab.
This plugin also allows you to paginate the comment section, which is one of the best tactics to clean up the comment section on your popular posts.
Some Features of WP-Paginate
- Free, clean, and easy to use
- Customizable Labels and buttons
- Easy to choose location and position
- Choose several navigation items to display
Pricing and Plans of WP-Paginate
Since WP-paginate is open-source software, it is available to download and use Free from the WordPress depository. However, if you like to experience its premium options such as more styling options, Preset layouts, and multisite support, you can go for WP-Paginate pro at $19.
How do the installation and setup Look like?
The installation of these WordPress pagination plugins is quite simple. It would be best if you went to the ‘Plugins’ section in your admin panel. Search for the ‘WP-Paginate’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ button. This way, the plugin will be successfully installed on your WordPress; after installing, press the ‘Activate’ button beside the plugin. The whole installation and activation process is the same for all the WordPress plugins available on the WordPress repository.
After you are done with the installation and activation part, you’ll find the plugin settings, in the Settings option as shown in the picture below:
WP-Paginate updates and Reviews
We checked with WP-Paginate updates and customer reviews in the WordPress directory and the kind of updates their developer has been pushing and found the following results for its version – 2.2.0.
- It has 40000 + active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 2 days ago. [ Regularly updated ]
- It has been currently tested up to 5.8.3.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is Average Rating 4.6/5. 78 users out of 93 gave it 5 stars.
WP-Paginate – WPOven opinion
WP-Paginate Review
Summary
We found WP-paginate, super easy and clean to use. The whole plugin installation setup process was smooth and seamless. The core plugin provides plenty of areas to explore and implement for any user with some basic but worthy features.
If you are happy with the just basic features the free version is sufficient for you and also you can use this plugin on any type of website to implement Pagination hassle-free.
3. Alphabetic Pagination
From the name itself, you can easily tell what the Alphabetic Pagination plugin can do. Many site owners or admins, can manage their posts and organize their pages alphabetically (A-Z) to provide more easy navigation. Unlike other paginating styles such as paginating by numbers or paginating posts by their date of publish, Alphabetic pagination allows you to create pages with each letter of the English alphabet.
Let us check out what it has to offer!
Some features of Alphabetic Pagination
- Switchable display empty alphabets
- Hide or Show Pagination
- Language option
- Specific or Custom CSS and DOM selectors
- Shortcodes for Pagination and users
- Various Templates and styling options, and many more.
Price and Plans of Alphabetic pagination
Like the above two mentioned WordPress pagination plugins, Alphabetic pagination is also open-source software that is available free to use and download from the WordPress repository.
How do the Installation and Setup look like?
The installation of Alphabetic Pagination is quite simple. It would be best if you went to the ‘Plugins’ section in your admin panel. Search for the ‘Alphabetic Pagination’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ button. This way, the plugin will be successfully installed on your WordPress; after installing, press the ‘Activate’ button beside the plugin. The whole installation and activation process is the same for all the WordPress plugins available on the WordPress repository.
After you are done with the installation and activation part, you’ll find the plugin settings, in the Settings option as shown in the picture below:
Alphabetic Pagination updates and Reviews
We checked with Alphabetic Pagination updates and customer reviews in the WordPress directory and the kind of updates their developer has been pushing and found the following results for its version – 3.0.0.
- It has 1000 + active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 4 weeks ago. [ Regularly updated ]
- It has been currently tested up to 5.8.3.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is Average Rating 4.7/5. 66 users out of 73 gave it 5 stars.
Alphabetic Pagination – WPOven opinion
Alphabetic Pagination Review
Summary
We found this plugin super easy and clean to use. The whole plugin installation setup process was smooth and seamless. The Dashboard is clean and straightforward to manage and use with all the necessary options and settings were there. We found this plugin best suitable for music or movie websites.
It also offers you a lot of customization options that you won’t find in any premium plugin as well.
4. Pagination by Bestwebsoft
One of the most simple yet featureful plugins that offer custom pagination to your WordPress site. This plugin will automatically add your custom pagination to your WordPress site, Blog, author pages, search results, category, and tags. In addition to it, there are a lot of customization features are offered in this plugin such as changing the effects of the border as well as text while hovering.
To make things a lot easier, this plugin also provides you with complete step-by-step documentation and videos, with the help of which you can play around with its settings and explore many other options.
Some features of Pagination by Bestwebsoft
- Automatic add pagination
- Add pagination using functions
- Placement of Pagination
- Plenty of Customization options
- Detailed step-by-step Guide manuals
- Customizable next/previous arrows and many more.
Price and Plans of Pagination by Bestwebsoft
Although, the Pagination by Bestwebsoft plugin is free to download and use from the WordPress repository. You can also go for their premium version which has a lot more premium options and features available, which is starting at $23.29 per year to $250 per year.
How do the Installation and Setup look like?
The installation of Pagination by Bestwebsoft is quite simple. It would be best if you went to the ‘Plugins’ section in your admin panel. Search for the ‘Pagination by Bestwebsoft’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ button. This way, the plugin will be successfully installed on your WordPress; after installing, press the ‘Activate’ button beside the plugin. The whole installation and activation process is the same for all the WordPress plugins available on the WordPress repository.
After you are done with the installation and activation part, you’ll find the pagination link, which will appear on the left side of the dashboard as shown in the picture below:
Bestwebsoft Plugin updates and Reviews
We checked with Bestwebsoft WordPress pagination plugin updates and customer reviews in the WordPress directory and the kind of updates their developer has been pushing and found the following results for its version – 1.2.2.
- It has 7000 + active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated 2 months ago. [ Regularly updated ]
- It has been currently tested up to 6.0.3.
- According to the WordPress Directory, its average rating is Average Rating 4.8/5. 42 users out of 44 gave it 5 stars.
Pagination by Bestwebsoft – WPOven opinion
Pagination by Bestwebsoft Review
Summary
We didn’t find any difficulty during the complete setup process and it was quite seamless, just like any WordPress plugin. The tutorial or documentation was quite helpful and it also help you to explore its more features. The free version has almost great features present but if you like to explore more options you can go for the pro version. The customer support was also satisfactory and it is the best suitable plugin for average or above-average users.
The only downside I found, is their pricing, it is too expensive. Other plugins can provide the same feature for Free.
5. WooCommerce Infinite Scroll and Ajax Pagination
If you are running a Woocommerce site, this plugin is the best option for paginating your product pages. With its infinite scroll feature, new product pages will automatically load, when your visitor scrolls down the page. This means the visitors do have not to click on numeric or alphabetic pagination to visit another page, instead of scrolling down till they find their desired product.
In addition to it, you can use this plugin to show variations of the same product on the same page which is the best option for any e-commerce website.
Some features of Woocommerce Infinite Scroll and Ajax Pagination
- Infinite Scroll with different options
- A lazy load option is available
- Well-optimized for different screen sizes and devices
- 130 Different animation styles are available
- A lot of complete Customization options
- Ajax Pagination is available and many more
Price and Plan of Wocommerce infinite scroll
Woocommerce infinite scroll is a premium WordPress gallery plugin that does not have any FREE version. And even it is not available in the WordPress directory. To use the Wocommerce infinite scroll for Paginate your product pages, you need to buy a regular license worth $17. After purchasing the regular license, you can install the plugin and create infinite scrollable product pages for your website.
How do the Installation and Setup look like?
The installation of Woocommerce infinite scroll is a bit different from other WordPress Pagination plugins. You’ll not find this plugin in your WordPress directory. To install this plugin, you first need to go to the CodeCanyon website and search for the ‘Woocommerce infinite scroll‘ plugin.
To install these WordPress Pagination plugins, you need to buy the licenses first. To buy the license, you have to click on ‘Buy Now‘ as shown below:
After that, you need to enter your credentials and purchase the license. After purchasing the license, you’ll get the option to download the plugin.
After downloading the plugin, You just need to go to the plugin section in your WordPress dashboard. Click on the ‘Upload Plugin’ option on the top left corner and upload the downloaded from your device. After this just click on ‘Activate’ and your plugin will be all set to work.
Woocommerce Infinite scroll Updates and Reviews
We checked with Woocommerce Infinite scroll customer reviews in the CodeCanyon directory and the kind of updates their developer has been pushing and found the following results.
- It has 1062 active installations right now.
- For us, it shows that it was updated last 4 months ago. [ Regularly updated ]
- According to the CodeCanyon Directory, its average rating is Average Rating 4.87/5.
Woocommerce infinite scroll – WPOven opinion
woocommerce infinite scroll Review
Summary
Well, I didn’t find any sort of issues regarding the whole setup process. The features were great, especially for woo-commerce websites. You can make a huge difference as long as you know the correct settings. Even the customer support was outstanding and the team responded to the queries immediately.
Summary
WordPress pagination is one of the best features with the help of which you can split up your long-form content into multiple pages. This can be easier for visitors to navigate the content and it also enhances user experience as well as the performance of the website by loading less data on each page.
However, WordPress pagination has become the default feature for all WordPress sites but some themes provide you with limited functions.
But you can overcome this limited functionality by using either the manual method or by using the 5 best WordPress pagination plugins we have mentioned above.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I Paginate in WordPress?
There are three options available by which you can implement Pagination in your WordPress site, they are:
1. Use the default feature of the WordPress theme you are using.
2. Use the Manual method which adding codes will require.
3. Use WordPress pagination plugins
What is WordPress pagination?
WordPress Pagination is a WordPress feature with the help of which you can split up your website’s content or blog posts into many separate pages.
Does pagination improve performance?
Yes, Pagination not just improves performance but also enhances, website crawIability as well as user experience. Pagination can dramatically enhance the performance of your websites by reducing the amount of content required to load on each page.
