Most WordPress themes come with default, pre-determined links for the pagination on your main blog feed page that simply say “Older Posts” and “Newer Posts.” Basically, these links are the only way to navigate between pages containing your posted content. The pagination links usually indicate how many pages there are total, what page you’re on, or allow you to navigate between pages that aren’t in sequential order. If you want to create custom page navigation and navigation links rather than using the default WordPress options, you can write custom code for it yourself, or you can take the easier and quicker route and use the free plugin WP PageNavi to achieve your desired pagination customizations.
The plugin is lightweight and easily customizable. With it, you can make all the changes and customizations to your navigation links from an easily accessible page on your WordPress dashboard. Options for customization include whether or not you want to include things like page numbers, total number of pages, and current page within the pagination. You can also set the text you’d like to use to link to the first and last pages, in addition to being able to set the text you’d like to use for the link to both the next page and the previous page.
The plugin comes with its own CSS file, so it does have inherent default styling, but any CSS file can be easily edited by you so that your navigation and pagination will match the rest of your WordPress site. Additionally, the plugin gives you access to filters that can be used to change the default class of pagination level elements, which can make them easier to style. This plugin is a great option to easily gain complete control over pagination navigation on your WordPress sites.
