How to Add Infinite Scrolling in WordPress

Is it like having too much content on your website? It probably depends on the type of content you are creating. However, if you’ve spent months or even years filling your lifestyle-themed WordPress website with top-notch content, you’d be forgiven for believing you can’t have too much of a good thing. And your website visitors may agree with you.

The problem with having so much to showcase on the website is that sometimes it’s hard to do it seamlessly. So, if your site visitors aren’t fans of “next, previous” navigation or numbered pagination, you’ll have to try something else that will help them easily find what they need.. This is where infinite scrolling in WordPress comes into play.

In this article we will explain:

What is Infinite Scrolling?

Have you ever seen the footer on a website like Facebook? Probably not, because you usually scroll up and down on what seems like an endless feed of posts and ads. This is an example of infinite scrolling, a navigation method that lets you browse posts, pages or websites by scrolling infinitely..

So this is an endless scroll for you. You don’t get to the footer and you can’t reach a button that says “next” or shows the number of the page you are on and adjacent pages. You can reach a button that says “load more”, a popular prompt used by likes on Buzzfeed, but you’ll be able to keep scrolling down as long as you want. Thanks to asynchronous JavaScript and something called XML or AJAX, content continues to load as you near the end of the page..

What Are the Pros and Cons of Infinite Scroll?

While you can easily find advocates of infinite scroll on social networks and blogs, and many WordPress websites with portfolio themes, some notable villains can likewise easily come to mind. First, although YouTube uses infinite scrolling, Google uses numbered pagination for search results. Amazon also uses numbered pagination, as do a fair share of media and content websites..

Infinite scrolling has champions and opponents, and that’s because it has different pros and cons.. In the list of benefits you will find:

If any of the above is a priority for your website, you can also consider adding infinite scrolling to it. However, you should not do this without reading the list of cons, which includes:

Here it is – four pluses and four minuses. If the pros outweigh the cons in your book, you can take the next step and find out what’s the easiest way to add an infinite scroll to your website..

How to Add Infinite Scrolling in WordPress

In some cases, you may not even need to add infinite scroll to your website — Your WordPress theme may already have infinite scroll navigation support. For example, in Bridge Theme you need to navigate to: Qode Options > Blogclick and then go to “Pagination on Walls/Pinterest/Headers” and choose “Infinite Scroll” as navigation method for blog list.

If you don’t have a WordPress theme with Infinite Scroll built in, you’ll need to download and install a plugin for it. There are a few you might want to try. For example, if you use Jetpack, you don’t need another one. But if you don’t, you can too Infinite Scroll Capture before.

After successfully installing the plugin, you should go to the “Capture Infinite Scroll” item on the dashboard. There you will find some basic settings that you get with the free version. You will be able to set the trigger to load new content – it can be a click or a swipe.

You’ll also find the option to upload a GIF that will appear while the infinite scroll is loading content. If your theme supports infinite scrolling, it is likely to come with a suitable GIF..

Finally, you will be able to set the text of the “Load More” button that will trigger the loading of additional content if you choose “click” instead of “scroll” as the trigger. You will also have the option to change the ending text, which is the text that appears where there is nothing else to load..

Among these options, you’ll find everything you need to set up an infinite scroll on your website’s blog page. Choosing to purchase the premium version of the plugin gives you access to additional options..

Let’s wrap it up!

Infinite scrolling can be an incredibly useful feature to help stick people to your website. Or it could be just what your website needs to become unruly and too difficult for most browsers to handle.

In general, infinite scrolling can be a feature that will do you more harm than good if you don’t have a clear plan for its use and a reasonable reason for needing it. Otherwise, you should consider this when purchasing a WordPress theme and get one that is built-in and save yourself some resources that you would use in an infinite scroll plugin.