Instead of using query_posts, use a hook pre_get_posts. Read more over at http://www.billerickson.net/customize-the-wordpress-query/
Custom Query Pagination
| I often only want to display certain categories or a custom post type and have had a lot of problems with displaying a custom query pagination or custom post type pagination. In my last post I have showed you how to simple add a [beautiful pagination with WP-PageNavi](https://schurpf.com//wordpress-pagination-how-to-paginate-in-wordpress/ “WordPress Pagination | How to paginate in WordPress”). In this post I will be showing you how to add a more complex pagination for custom post types and categories. There are a lot of solutions out there, several using the variable WP_Query or even querying the database itself. Let me share with you how I do custom query pagination with the following example. |
Example custom query pagination
Goal of code below is to display all but category with id 3. (To find ids of categories go to post->categories->CategoryName and check the address bar for its id).
[code]
<?php $paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
$args= array(
‘cat’ => -3,
‘paged’ => $paged,
);?>
<?php query_posts( $args );?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
…[/code]
This is it. There are two things to note. The first one is the first line where I retrieve the variable paged or set it to 1 if it doesnt exist. The second thing to note is that I use query_posts while passing it the variable paged as argument. This is it. Simple as that.
Example custom post type pagination
[code]
<?php $paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;
$args= array(
‘post_type’ => ‘YourCustomPostType’,
‘paged’ => $paged,
);?>
<?php query_posts( $args );?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
…
[/code]
Please replace YourCustomPostType with your custom post type slug. This is essentially the same as above, the only thing changes is the argument passed to query_posts. That is it. Nothing else, nothing more.
Custom Query Pagination, Custom Post Type Pagination – posts_per_page
I have found that as soon as I set posts_per_page I run into very strange behavior (i.e. it doesnt work). I try to avoid using posts_per_page and rather set the number of posts via:
Settings->Reading-> Blog pages show at most x posts
Where I set number x to what I want. That way I can use the custom query pagination as described above and dont have to worry about anything.
Hope this helped you. Please leave a comment if anything is unclear or you simply want to thank me (I like that 🙂 ). Also consider signing up to my newsletter to receive similar valuable information.