Choosing a Pagination Structure for Your Blog
Although this may appear as a negligible topic, it is important in how your readers find your previous, archived content. In some ways, you want to be in the middle of their demands – you don’t want to have a complex navigation structure, but you also don’t want to have a simple structure that doesn’t get them anywhere other than the main post/page.
It can be difficult to decide or build a structure that works for your blog if you constantly look at your blog from the administrators’ perspective. However, there are a few main things to look for when you decide how to create your pagination structure.
If you…
– Have a lot of content, then go with a structure that allows you to truly showcase all your content, not just the most recent five to ten posts. Don’t let your readers become overwhelmed with content, either. The best approach would be to use pagination at the bottom of each page, allowing readers to quickly browse multiple pages, not just using the default “next” and “previous” page tags.
Ex. Page 1 of 10 [1..2..3..4..and so on]
– Want to showcase individual posts or featured content, then you should use a structure that truly focuses on each individual post. This is ideal for people who publish no more than one post per day. Before a reader visits your post, they know immediately what it may be about, as indicated by the post title.
Ex. < Post 1 (Name) – Post 2 (Name) >
– Want to include everything, use a drop-down menu that displays all posts. Now, this is a last attempt at annoying your visitors, as they will have an extremely difficult time browsing the most recent posts and finding what interests them. However, it would work if you only have ten to fifteen posts and are publishing on a niche-type site.
– Want to be more inclusive, you should set up definitions that display content based on month. Again, this ideal for smaller sites that aren’t publishing multiple articles daily. You want to make use of this if you have only published (on average) five to twenty posts per month. This will allow you to use the next and previous links much like archives, browsing through time.
Use the coding from this page (WordPress Codex) to make the most of the uses that I have illustrated. More on blog design and interface will be covered in upcoming posts.
Some examples of pagination techniques can be found at Smashing Magazine.
