Page Links at the bottom of threads

Is it possible to add page links (1,2,3,4,5,etc) to the bottom of the thread since that is naturally where you end up when you are ready to go to the next page?

Respectfully,

George

They should be showing up at the top *and* bottom of the page. Have another look!

Huh, maybe I was blind. Maybe it's that way when I'm not logged in?

I appears to me that one must be logged on to see the page numbers at the bottom.


Rufus

I only get page numbers at the bottom. Probably because I am on an IPhone.

This has been bothering me for ages.
I registered and logged in and now I see page numbers at the bottom.

Landor LeBaron wrote:This has been bothering me for ages.
I registered and logged in and now I see page numbers at the bottom.

Logged out users only see a minimum set of functionality and that implies no pagination links at the bottom of the page but are only available on page top.

Logged out users only see a minimum set of functionality...

I highly recommend getting registered, and logging in every time you visit:
Enjoy full functionality each time you visit. See what you are missing.

Jaikiran Pai wrote:Logged out users only see a minimum set of functionality and that implies no pagination links at the bottom of the page but are only available on page top.

By the power invested in me by 13 years of building websites for a living, I hereby declare with great authority and absoluteness that not having pagination at the bottom of the thread is bad usability.

Requiring a user to scroll to the top to see if there are additional pages, let alone navigate, is a cognitive roadblock.
Some people will be lost, going away not knowing additional pages are even possible.
Mobile users have to swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, all the way to the top, then maybe a little ways back down, unless they're lucky enough to have a scrollbar and even more lucky to know how to use it.
Someone used to being authenticated whose browser session expires without them realizing it may expect bottom pagination.
A user might also reasonably expect to not have their day RUINED AND WRECKED over and over again by simple usability issues such as this.

What is the purpose of having this off for unauthenticated users? The tiny block of code is not saving that much bandwidth or cpu and the usability benefit is massive.
Now that I know I can get bottom pagination while being logged in, I will be browsing the site authenticated which turns on all the bells an whistles, just to get the bottom pagination. Oh the horror of wasted and mutilated data and cpu resources.
I have seen people on here mention in a reply that only after they discovered the pagination at the top were they able to get the whole story.
How many people are just lost?

This is not to say that the top pagination should be removed for unauthenticated users. It is useful to have an immediate indicator of how far along one is in the conversation, and, of course, current users expect it.

While completely unnecessary due to my previously established absolute authority and full knowingishness of the situation, I hope that my reasoning will convince, NAY, INSPIRE, you to turn on the bottom pagination for unauthenticated users.

:)

John Polk wrote:Enjoy full functionality each time you visit. See what you are missing.

Lol what brand?

Landor LeBaron wrote:[

What is the purpose of having this off for unauthenticated users? The tiny block of code is not saving that much bandwidth or cpu and the usability benefit is massive.
Now that I know I can get bottom pagination while being logged in, I will be browsing the site authenticated which turns on all the bells an whistles, just to get the bottom pagination. Oh the horror of wasted and mutilated data and cpu resources.
I have seen people on here mention in a reply that only after they discovered the pagination at the top were they able to get the whole story.
How many people are just lost?

Landor, this doesn't have anything to do with CPU or bandwidth. It's more of a SEO thing. Non logged in users include search/index bots too (for example google bot) and having those links at multiple places apparently hurts SEO.

Having said that, we are willing to think of switching the pagination links from the top of the page to the bottom of page for non-logged in users, since that perhaps a is a better idea because the users typically look for a pagination link when they have read the last post on that page.

Jaikiran Pai wrote:
Landor, this doesn't have anything to do with CPU or bandwidth. It's more of a SEO thing. Non logged in users include search/index bots too (for example google bot) and having those links at multiple places apparently hurts SEO.

Having said that, we are willing to think of switching the pagination links from the top of the page to the bottom of page for non-logged in users, since that perhaps a is a better idea because the users typically look for a pagination link when they have read the last post on that page.

I do not agree that SEO would be negatively affected by having the pagination at the top and bottom.
Many sites have navigation in multiple places such as main nav tabs at the top, perhaps with sub-pages as dropdowns, then section specific nav at the side, and then the same main nav with simpler styling repeated at the bottom. If you have links in 9000 places and your site is flagged as a spammy site then perhaps it would be a problem. They have algorithms to detect such things and repeating a pagination area is not going to trigger that. Search engines are much more intelligent these days and the general guidelines are to have clean, semantic markup and provide content that is useful and usable to the user. If that means putting the nav or pagination in 2 places then that's what you should do.

If you're really worried about this, get the site set up with google webmaster tools and it will let you know of any potential SEO related issues.
While you're at it you could even install some Analytics events on the different paginations and track usage for top vs bottom with authenticated vs unauthenticated and get yourself some fancy graphs to show usage over time for all 4 scenarios! :)

I do not think it is a good idea to switch it from the top to the bottom.
You have tons of users that already expect it a certain way. If you change it they will all simultaneously say, "UHHM HEY??? HOW PAGE CHANGES???"
There are also usability issues that come with not having it at the top, some of which I already mentioned for not having the bottom pagination present but also apply if there is no pagination at the top.
Mobile users still have to scroll a ton to get to pagination.
What about when someone opens a thread they are familiar with and then wants to go directly to a certain page? They have to scroll to the bottom.
Seeing the pagination at the top gives a user an immediate indication of how popular or useful or other things a thread is if it has many pages.

Sooo I believe it is important to have pagination at the top as well as the bottom and that there are only benefits, which is to say it is devoid of detriment.

Landor LeBaron wrote:

Sooo I believe it is important to have pagination at the top as well as the bottom and that there are only benefits, which is to say it is devoid of detriment.

Landor, there have been discussions about this earlier and I don't think we'll be having pagination both at the top and bottom of the threads for non logged in users. I understand this may not be to the liking of some, but people who know SEO more than I do, do not want these double links.

Now like I said, there are ways to let the user know that the thread spans multiple pages. Based on inputs from some others, I think one way to do this is to have the pagination link at the bottom of the page for non logged in users and at the top of the thread show a message which states that the threads span multiple pages, links for which are available at the bottom of the thread or they can login to get the links both at the top and the bottom of the thread.

Jaikiran Pai wrote:
Now like I said, there are ways to let the user know that the thread spans multiple pages. Based on inputs from some others, I think one way to do this is to have the pagination link at the bottom of the page for non logged in users and at the top of the thread show a message which states that the threads span multiple pages, links for which are available at the bottom of the thread or they can login to get the links both at the top and the bottom of the thread.

I think that's a good solution.
If the pagination is only going to be in one place I think it is more logical at the bottom and the indication of multiple pages at the top satisfies convenience.

Not having those links is not good SEO.

Google doesn't like "spammy" links - ie repeated linking to the same content over and over simply to manipulate the search engine rankings - however their algorithms are now incredibly sophisticated and can tell the difference between normal, helpful site navigation and webspam.

There is lots of evidence (including comments direct from Matt Cutts, google search's public face) that they actively want to encourage good user experience and effective linking through pages. They are actively encouraging webmasters to use navigation "breadcrumbs" to help people get around, both at top and bottom of pages.

Breadcrumbs use keywords, not just numbers and yet they are happy with that format and even expect to see it.

There is so much fear out there about SEO which is unjustified. The best advice now is to forget the search engines entirely and do what is best for your user. Everything else will follow.

I've been annoyed by this same issue many times in the past, including when browsing on my ipad and phone and it is terribly frustrating to have to scroll over and over to get to the next page. Not all browsers remember login details successfully so unless I actively remember I need to manually log back in.