Pagination Comes to TypePad!

I'd say that the most common feature request I've seen since starting TypePad Hacks has been for a way to paginate archive pages with next/previous links. There was really no good way to do that as a hack because of the way content is organized in TypePad's database structure. It required changes on the back end.

But last Friday, pagination for posts was added as a feature. It's being rolled out incrementally (I still don't have it enabled, for instance) but it's on the way. Comment pagination came first and I still haven't seen the code for that either, but I'm thinking it will actually be even more useful on some blogs than the post pagination.

This is going to make a lot of people very happy. And I'm kind of itching to see the code and get it installed since I'm curious about what else I might be able to do with the pagination code. It seems like it might be hackable to create some interesting navigation options, but I won't really know till I see it. I just have some ideas…

If this was on your wishlist, take a minute and send a thank you note from the help ticket page. It's always nice to say thank you, and I'm betting that the development team would love knowing that their hard work was appreciated

Comments

[Posted: Oct 22, 2007 6:45:38 PM]

Wow, I've been asking and waiting for pagination for well over a year now. I'm glad Typepad got around to it, although I have not seen it on my blog yet. Maybe before the holidays?

[Posted: Oct 22, 2007 9:26:53 PM]

This article freakin' made my year!! I think page views will spike incredibly once that gets installed.

[Posted: Oct 23, 2007 10:23:50 AM]

What I want to know is, will TypePad ever enable threaded comments? After running several TypePad blogs over the past four years, that's MY most-wanted feature.

[Posted: Dec 8, 2007 1:04:18 PM]

Yeah, but it's still just on *archive* pages. The most important place for pagination links is on a blog's front page. Failing that, it should at least be possible to put a link to the archive at the bottom of your posts. The Everything TypePad blog has that, in fact... so how do they do it?

[Posted: Jan 18, 2008 7:44:57 PM]

I still don't have the ability to add this, and it's been months. Hopefully soon!

[Posted: Feb 27, 2008 12:58:30 PM]

Hi John,

I just contacted Typepad to see if this feature was available for my site - they replied that it is and they can switch it on if I want it. People may therefore need to contact Typepad to specifically ask for this rather than waiting for it to happen...

However, they also said:

"Please be aware that Advanced Templates and Mixed Media
Layouts are not fully supported with these new features, so
if you use or switch to either of these, you may experience
problems.

If you notice any problems after we switch your account,
please update this ticket and let us know as soon as
possible.

Please respond to this ticket if you would like these
changes to be applied to your account."

This was enough to make me pause, because I'm not confident enough with HTML to be sure of being able to sort out any problems that might arise.

Does anybody have any experience of using pagination with advanced templates?

All the best,

David

[Posted: Apr 12, 2008 10:25:52 PM]

I wanted to say thank you for this information. I entered a help ticket with Typepad and they were able to add the beta feature of front page pagination to my blog for me. Its great - now I have Previous/Next, Older, Newer, available in my Typepad blog footer. I blogged about this on "my" Typepad blog - click on my name above.

Great feature I am so happy now! :-)

[Posted: Apr 15, 2008 5:28:36 PM]

I *hate* the new pagination "feature" that Typepad just implemented where comments and archives are paginated whether the blogger wants them to be or not. I was thinking of switching to Typepad but am now having second thoughts. Not that I will ever have enough comments to require pagination, but on well-traveled blogs the pagination makes it very hard to follow discussions in comments. Not only that, but Typepad announced this with great fanfare on the everything.typepad blog, but there's no way to comment on it. I'm leery of any company that introduces "features" people didn't ask for and don't want, and makes it hard to give feedback.

[Posted: Apr 16, 2008 5:32:52 AM]

>> Does anybody have any experience of using pagination with advanced templates?

There has been a recent update for both pagination and comment feeds.

Dive into the Knowledge Base within TypePad and search on 'pagination' the first two results should prove useful.

But as you'll see there is a fair bit of coding involved so make sure your template files are backed up just in case.

[Posted: Apr 17, 2008 1:19:56 PM]

I'm with Lucia! I hate the new pagination feature. I don't want my comments broken up into separate pages - it makes it too hard to follow a long discussion. Why on earth did they make this mandatory rather than optional???

Does anyone know if there is a way to turn this OFF in advanced templates? I haven't switched over from Basic, but this would make it worthwhile to learn enough to do so!

Help!

[Posted: Oct 25, 2008 9:54:03 AM]

I agree with Susan and Lucia: It's fine having this as an option, but yet again a TypePad mandatory change means Advanced Template users lose more control over how their pages look.

How are you supposed to future-proof your design? I have no confidence any more that the pages I've spent hours and hours designing will not be broken by some future change.

I've had zero response from my complaint to Six Apart about this as well.

This is the final straw for me, and I won't be renewing my account next year. Disappointing.

[Posted: Oct 30, 2008 8:12:01 PM]

Pagination works for me. Some of my posts get well over 200 comments and it used to take an age to load the page. Now the load time is quicker and constant.

Trouble is, the comments notifiers only keep track of comments on the first page. They can't "find" the URLs for comments on any subsequent pages.

Anyone know if it is possible to install sidebar links that will jump to the extra pages?

"After running several TypePad blogs over the past four years, that's MY most-wanted feature."

I've been with Typepad about the same time and MY most-wanted features are the "recently commented on" instruction and the ability to put buttons in the comment section to make it easier for commenters to use bold, italcs, strike and add links. At the moment, none of these are possible with Typepad. Apparently.