How to Add Pagination to WordPress Website Easily in 2023

Adjusting your site’s pagination helps a user to create a more user-friendly easily navigable website. However many WordPress themes don’t offer detailed pagination options.

Many advanced users may rely on custom codes for pagination while most beginners may prefer using pagination plugins.

The truth be told; it is easy to attach paginations on your WordPress Website irrespective of the method you choose to use.

This article is aimed at highlighting the easy guidelines on how to add paginations on your WordPress website either manually or via plugins.

How to Add Pagination in WordPress without Plugin

By default, a standard WordPress website will show a maximum of ten (10) posts per page.

Let’s say we have 32 posts, on the WordPress website by default the first three (3) pages will contain ten (10) posts while the last page will contain only three (3 )posts.

If in the case you want to break the posts into let’s say more than four pages or make the number of pages lesser all you have to do is to click on the “settings” menu on the dashboard.

Once on the “settings” menu click on the “reading” and then adjust the “Blog pages show at most” option to any amount of posts you want to see on any page.

This allows you to break your blog listing pages into multiple pages. However, a WordPress website can also allow you to break an individual post into various pages. To achieve this too is also very easy and simple.

Let’s say you are using the WordPress blog editor (Gutenberg) it allows you to choose anywhere you want your posts to have a page break using the “page break” block.

But if you are making use of the MCE editor you can add page breaks by placing your cursor on the place you want it on the virtual tab of the editor and then type in the keyboard shortcuts “ALT +SHIFT +P” 

You can also do this by typing in the snippet <!–next page–> on the text tab of the editor.

Installing paginations using Pagination plugins

For most users who want to assert more control over pagination on WordPress, it is ideal if you use a WordPress pagination plugin. Below is a list of the top pagination plugins available

• WP-Page Navi
• WP-Paginate
• Pagination by BestWebSoft
• Pagination by Ajax Load More
• Alphabetic pagination plugin
• WP -Show Posts
• Pagination Styler for WooCommerce

WP-Pagenavi

It is the most popular pagination plugin used. It’s free of charge and is active on over 700,000 sites. This pagination plugin gives the user a simple setting to control the paginations on the website.

If in the case the user wants more control over the design of your pagination, the WP-PageNavi allows the third-party styles for WP-PageNavi add-up plugins.

Due to its popularity, some WordPress themes are built-in support of these pagination plugins. If your theme supports this plugin that means all you have to do is to activate it, configure the settings and you are good to go!

However, if your theme does have inbuilt support for this plugin you will have to manually edit your theme template files to allow the plugin to work. Be mindful that it requires a huge technical Knowledge.

WP-Paginate

It is another popular pagination plugin for setting up custom paginations on the WordPress site.

This plugin allows the user to add custom paginations to their comment section to speed up the comments.

Unlike the WP-PageNavi the WP-Paginate doesn’t allow you to edit your theme template files directly. This method is often the best to use for a user that lacks technical Knowledge.

Aside from this, the plugins grant the user exclusive access to any aspect of pagination be it labels and buttons, placements, and how many paginations to display 

To do this you go to the “settings” then on the “WP Paginate ” click on it to control the plugin settings and configure your pagination to your taste.

Pagination by BestWebSoft

This pagination plugin allows the user to add new pagination systems without necessarily editing your theme template files.

Just like the WP paginate plug you can also edit your theme template file if you want to establish more control over your pagination.

You can configure your pagination to any style, location, and behavior that you want via the plugin settings menu on the dashboard

Pagination by Ajax Load More

This pagination plugin gives you access to buttons that loads more content without forcing the user to load a new page

Ajax Load More allows you to replace your pagination with a “load more” button with the free version instead of adding pagination links that visitors can use to navigate the website.

Instead of adding paginations to your existing posts, the Ajax Load More plugins work by creating a new post list that includes your desired settings.

To configure your pagination you will have to access it from the Ajax Load More settings on your dashboard.

Alphabetic Pagination

This pagination plugin allows you to paginate using the A -Z listing

Rather than paginating by numbers and ordering posts by their polished themes, this plugin lets you create a pagination option for each letter of the alphabet. Thus if a user clicks on any letter of the alphabet, he will see the content pieces that start with that letter.

To do this, you can access the Alphabetic Pagination tab and then. click on settings. On that “settings” menu, you can now configure what your pagination should look like.

WP Show posts

This pagination plugin helps you to create your post lists completely with custom paginations.

In this case, you are not adding new pagination to your blog list rather you are creating a new blog list that includes your pagination settings.

This plugin also has a flexible query builder which allows you to choose exactly which post to show and also which post to paginate.

Once the plugin has been activated you can configure your posts via the plugin settings.

Pagination Styler for WooCommerce

As the name implies is pagination specially made for WooCommerce stores.

It gives you many options to choose from in controlling your WooCommerce store pagination and style.

I hope from this article you have been able to know to paginate your posts and also know the most relevant pagination plugins to use.

FAQs

Conclusion

By the time you’re done with reading this article, be rest assured that you can setup pagination on any type of WordPress Website.

If you have any questions on WordPress pagination, feel free to ask me via the comments section.