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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When a visitor is accessing your content, they can easily navigate to another page of the content by simply using the “Next<\/strong>” and “previous<\/strong>” 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For your reference, you can look at what WordPress pagination looks like which is inbuilt and available in the default theme Twenty Twenty-one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WordPress pagination is used for the following five main reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> 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”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> Crawlability. We know it has not a sign for SEO but even a slight performance improvement can make a difference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a>” where we have completely explained the various tactics or methods to boost any website performance. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also check out the dedicated blog on “How to monetize a blog<\/a>” and learn different ways to generate revenues.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now you know the main reason why Paginating can be helpful for you, let us get into the pros and cons of using it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, let us see how you can use the default options for pagination on the WordPress theme twenty twenty-one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, you can also change these settings as per your requirements. To do this, all you need to do is to go Settings > Reading<\/strong> and make the changes as per your need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a>, 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<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: <\/strong>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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Example](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Example-of-WordPress-Pagination-1024x500.png\" "\\"\\"")
Why do you need to utilize WordPress Pagination?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Enhances User experience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"WPOven](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_6-1024x455.png\" "\\"\\"")
Improves crawlability<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Enhancing overall website performance<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Reduces server load and loading time<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Generate revenues through advertising<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pros and Cons of Paginating Your WordPress website<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Pros<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
Cons<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n
How you can setup WordPress Pagination in your site Manually<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Manually](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_9-1-1024x561.png\" "\\"\\"")
function wpoven_post_pagination_nav() {\n \n if( is_singular() )\n return;\n \n global $wp_query;\n \n \/** Stop executing if there is only single post *\/\n if( $wp_query->max_num_pages <= 1 )\n return;\n \n $paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ) ? absint( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) : 1;\n $max = intval( $wp_query->max_num_pages );\n \n \/** Add current page to the array *\/\n if ( $paged >= 1 )\n $links[] = $paged;\n \n \/** Add the pages around the current page to the array *\/\n if ( $paged >= 3 ) {\n $links[] = $paged - 1;\n $links[] = $paged - 2;\n }\n \n if ( ( $paged + 2 ) <= $max ) {\n $links[] = $paged + 2;\n $links[] = $paged + 1;\n }\n \n echo '<div class=\"navigation\"><ul>' . \"\\n\";\n \n \/** Previous Post Link *\/\n if ( get_previous_posts_link() )\n printf( '<li>%s<\/li>' . \"\\n\", get_previous_posts_link() );\n \n \/** Link to first page, plus ellipses if necessary *\/\n if ( ! in_array( 1, $links ) ) {\n $class = 1 == $paged ? ' class=\"active\"' : '';\n \n printf( '<li%s><a href=\"%s\">%s<\/a><\/li>' . \"\\n\", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( 1 ) ), '1' );\n \n if ( ! in_array( 2, $links ) )\n echo '<li>\u2026<\/li>';\n }\n \n \/** Link to current page, plus 2 pages in either direction if necessary *\/\n sort( $links );\n foreach ( (array) $links as $link ) {\n $class = $paged == $link ? ' class=\"active\"' : '';\n printf( '<li%s><a href=\"%s\">%s<\/a><\/li>' . \"\\n\", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $link ) ), $link );\n }\n \n \/** Link to last page *\/\n if ( ! in_array( $max, $links ) ) {\n if ( ! in_array( $max - 1, $links ) )\n echo '<li>\u2026<\/li>' . \"\\n\";\n \n $class = $paged == $max ? ' class=\"active\"' : '';\n printf( '<li%s><a href=\"%s\">%s<\/a><\/li>' . \"\\n\", $class, esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $max ) ), $max );\n }\n \n \/** Next Post Link *\/\n if ( get_next_posts_link() )\n printf( '<li>%s<\/li>' . \"\\n\", get_next_posts_link() );\n \n echo '<\/ul><\/div>' . \"\\n\";\n \n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n.navigation li a,\n.navigation li a:hover,\n.navigation li.active a,\n.navigation li.disabled {\n color: #fff;\n text-decoration:none;\n}\n \n.navigation li {\n display: inline;\n}\n \n.navigation li a,\n.navigation li a:hover,\n.navigation li.active a,\n.navigation li.disabled {\n background-color: \t#000080;\n border-radius: 3px;\n cursor: pointer;\n padding: 12px;\n padding: 0.75rem;\n}\n \n.navigation li a:hover,\n.navigation li.active a {\n background-color: #ADD8E6;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"Wpoven\"](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Choose-wpoven-and-get-free-themes-and-premium-addon.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Best WordPress Pagination Plugins<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. WP-PageNavi<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"WP-PageNavi\"](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_14-1024x485.png\" "\\"\\"")
![\"WP-PageNavi](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_15-1024x452.png\" "\\"\\"")
![\"WP-PageNavi](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_16-1024x679.png\" "\\"\\"")
![\"WP-PageNavi](\"https:\/\/www.wpoven.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screenshot_17-1024x273.png\" "\\"\\"")