Infinite scroll or pagination?
I've been considering a change from the pagination approach of the “Links” section on my personal website.
Advantages of one page with “infinite scrolling”
- It allows visitors to “search” (with the “find” function) for keywords across all titles. I wonder how many people would do that.
- It improves the experience for visitors on a mobile device — it can be difficult to select “next” and “previous.”
- Using anchor links and infinite scroll might serve as a suitable HTML-only alternative to pagination.
Disadvantages
- It would require visitors to download all of what was previously multiple pages as one HTML file, which might increase bandwidth usage or loading time. On the other hand, the header and footer will only need to load once for the “Links” section and not for each page.
- The footer won't be visible without scrolling all the way to the bottom. From the basic understanding I have of CSS and HTML, implementing a “Load more” button would require JavaScript. Are anchor links a solution to this problem?
- Trying a different type of pagination, in which “Load more” actually loads a new HTML file with additional posts, is another possibility. Actually doing so might lead to more problems with bandwidth and a poor user experience. See also the previous problem.
- Unless opened in a new tab, returning from a post to the “Links” page will cause visitors to lose their position. I don't want to implement a JavaScript solution.
Other considerations
- Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing: None of the numbered pages have been indexed as of 2020-12-01, meaning I wouldn't need to add new redirects to .htaccess (which might further increase load times).
- Indexing of numbered pages leads to inaccurate preview text. Each new post changes the content of all numbered pages, which will become more of a problem if multiple pages are indexed. I could always add the numbered pages to my robots.txt file.
- I want to promote user choice to “load more” or visit additional pages.
Writing out all of these factors, I think I'll go with this alternative: Increase the number of posts on each page (currently six). I wonder if I should also add more space between titles.
You can visit my personal website at ethanyoo.com.