(UPDATED ON NOVEMBER 28, 2019) It is difficult to list all the links of a website on a single page of results if there are a lot of content pages in a specific category. Listing all the links would make things crammed and can cause long loading times. Pagination prevents you from just that. Pagination is the term used for the navigation from one web page to another which appears below the list of articles on a page. It helps segment links to content on multiple pages. Thus, greatly decreasing the loading time, increasing usability and user experience. Also, paginating the results for search engines is a great practice for search engine optimization. Therefore, pagination has become an integral part of any modern blog so much so that it has become a core feature in WordPress.
Most modern WordPress themes have pagination feature baked in them but with the default “next page” and “previous page” links to navigate between different website overview pages. Many older themes don’t even have that. So, if you want to add pagination support to your WordPress theme with cool numbers instead of the default & previous posts, you can use WordPress pagination plugins. It is possible to add pagination manually because it gives you more control over the pagination styling and saves you the time for searching a plugin. But that requires some knowledge of coding. So, in this post, we’ve collected some of the best WordPress plugins for pagination.
Catch Infinite Scroll
Catch Infinite Scroll adds infinite scroll on your website. It is the ultimate solution for all page loading issues caused by the change of the page. With the plugin installed and activated, users will be able to simply scroll down and go deeper into your website. The plugin is extremely handy if you have tons of long content on your site. The plugin will automatically load content as you scroll down the page. Or you can also add a “Load More” button to load more content. You will have control over some of the crucial features available in the plugin, such as choosing between Click or Scroll to load more content, add a custom image, load more text, and finish the text.
If you want more advanced features like unlimited color options, custom font size, and more to your infinite scrolling, we suggest you go for the premium version of this plugin – Catch Infinite Scroll Pro.
Catch Infinite Scroll plugin requires WordPress version 4.8 or higher to operate and is tested up to 5.3.
WP-PageNavi
WP-PageNavi is one of the most popular free WordPress plugins for pagination that adds beautiful numbered navigation. It has more than 1 million active installs and enjoys a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars in the WordPress Plugin directory. It is pretty easy to use. Once you install and activate the plugin, you’ll find the plugin settings in the Settings of your WordPress dashboard.
From the Settings > PageNavi page, you can customize the label for various portions of the text for some pages, current page text, text for first, last, previous and next page. You can also assign custom signs for the previous and next indicators.
The “Page Navigation Options” section hosts some styling options for pagination. Firstly, you can choose to display the navigation as usual or as a drop-down list. Then, you can select to show pagination even if there is a single page.
In case your blog has lots of posts, you can select to show navigation for larger page numbers as well. You can choose the multiple for large page numbers.
It requires WordPress version 3.2 or higher to operate and is compatible up to 4.5.3.
Pagination by BestWebSoft
Pagination is a simple and straightforward WordPress pagination plugin. Developed by BestWebSoft, this free plugin does what it’s been made for the right of the bat. No extra hassles.
The “Pagination Position” field allows you to choose the pagination location. The next few options could be used to customize the next, previous arrows and to hide the default pagination system. In the “Appearance” tab, you can choose various display options. First of all, it is possible to specify the pagination block width and alignment. Then, you can define other visual components like left and right margin, background colors, text color, and border color, width, and radius.
It requires WordPress version 3.8 or higher and compatible up to 4.5.3. It has been rated 5 out of 5 stars from 18 reviews with over 5,000 active installs.
WP Post Break Pagination
WP Post Break is a premium plugin that offers a more stylish and attractive pagination solution. It comes with 26 pagination styles with unlimited customization options. Besides the simple pagination styles, there are also styles like an arrow with numbering, an icon with numbering, pagination without numbering, magic and animated. Each of these styles has multiple variations too.
Once you install and activate the plugin, a new item titled “WP Post Break Pagination” will be created in the admin menu. You’ll find all the pagination styles in the “Pagination Categories” tab of the page. For each style, you can choose the font family, font size, color, background color, link border color, etc. As you the changes, you’ll be able to see the preview on the right side.
The general plugin settings option are located on the “Setting” tab. It is possible to choose the pagination links limit and provide custom text for next, previous, first and last buttons. The fully responsive paginations will work perfectly on any modern browser.
Animated Infinite Scroll
Animated Infinite Scroll is not your run-of-the-mill plugin. This plugin provides you with three pagination styles – infinite scroll, AJAX pagination, and the numbered pagination.
With the infinite scroll, the next page loads automatically when a visitor reaches the bottom of the page.
The AJAX pagination option will provide visitors with a ‘Load More’ button. Once the visitor clicks the button, the content of the next page will load on the same page.
And the simple pagination style will add the usual page numbers. As AJAX also powers it, the next page contents will load on the same page. Choosing different animation styles for each pagination mode is possible. You can customize the loading image too.
Conclusion
A good quality pagination system is key to any website because if your site is not easy to navigate, no user will stick to it. These WordPress plugins for pagination mentioned above are good enough to provide you modern responsive navigation system for your site.
So, do you have any pagination in your WordPress site? Do you use any other plugins than the ones mentioned in this post? Let us know in the comments below.