How to Get WordPress Infinite Scroll on Your Site

Want infinite scroll on your WordPress site? With the right WordPress infinite scroll plugin, it's easy. Let's learn how!

Looking to add infinite scroll to posts in WordPress? With the right WordPress theme or plugin, we can do that with little or no coding.

First things first, let's define what we mean by infinite scroll. It's a browsing experience that allows users to scroll indefinitely until they run out of content.

But what kind of content? For most people looking to implement infinite scroll in WordPress, there are three common use cases:

1. Infinite post loading: As users scroll through the list of blog posts, more posts appear. This functionality replaces the need for a load more button.
2. Infinite scroll single post: When a user scrolls to the end of a blog post, another blog post loads.
3. Infinite scroll custom content: Allow users to scroll custom content, like real estate listings for example.

In this post, we'll recommend solutions for all of the above. Lucky for us, there are some great infinite scroll plugins and themes to help us do the heavy lifting.

But before we get to that, let's make sure infinite scroll features are suitable for your website.

Is infinite scroll for WordPress posts always a good idea?

Let's first ask ourselves: why do we want a WordPress blog with infinite scroll?

Infinite scroll can be a nice option for some websites. It allows your website to behave like Instagram, where users can scroll "infinitely" and keep getting new content. This makes it ideal for mobile users who are already used to this kind of experience.

So who should add infinite scroll options to their sites? There are a couple of obvious choices:

• Websites with a mostly mobile audience
• Any site that wants to encourage browsing (ecommerce, real estate, listing sites)

But are there downsides to infinite scrolling? Yes - for example:

1. It can cause SEO difficulties: Depending on what kind of content you are infinitely scrolling, you could run into trouble with SEO. The reality is that Google is still not sure how to crawl these pages properly, and they have recommendations on how to code your site properly to avoid problems.
2. Your footer becomes useless: If your pages are constantly loading more posts, then your footer will never be seen of course!
3. It can be confusing: Sometimes users may not know where one post ends and another begins. It sounds simple, but this can really affect UX on your WordPress site.
4. Analytics becomes a challenge: Instead of tracking user behavior one post at a time, you'll now be tracking them across infinite post loads. Setting up proper tracking is not yet intuitive. Plus, you're encouraging users to scroll endlessly... so if they scroll past an entire post, your data is going to become unreliable.

So on one hand, it allows for a user experience that more and more people enjoy. And on the other, it creates additional challenges that may not be worth it.

If you're all good with that, let's get to our WordPress infinite scroll tutorial!

The best WordPress infinite scroll solutions

We're going to show you the best options for the following infinite scroll modes:

1. WordPress infinite scroll through posts (scrolling reveals more posts)
2. WordPress post infinite scrolling (scrolling reveals the next posts)
3. Custom WordPress Ajax infinite scroll (scrolling reveals custom content)

The first two modes are relatively straightforward and can be implemented through WordPress plugins and themes.

The third mode can be implemented via our low-code WordPress application builder: Formidable Views.

Ultimately, the reason you'd want to use any of these options is simple. Coding a WordPress infinite scroll Ajax loading solution from scratch isn't easy!

And if you are wondering what Ajax is, don't worry! It's a technical concept with a number of different applications. But when we are talking about Ajax infinite scroll in WordPress, it just means that new content loads "as you scroll".

This is important because without Ajax, you'd need to load all the posts on your site if you wanted to do infinite scrolling. With Ajax, more posts are fetched as needed - when users scroll, Ajax requests load more posts (allowing for much faster load times).

1. WordPress infinite scroll through posts

If you are looking for a way to allow users to load more posts as they scroll down the page, look no further. Here's a great solution: The Ajax Load More Plugin.

If all you want to do is replace your load more button with infinite scroll functionality, this is the plugin to choose. It has great reviews, and even has some advanced features like:

• Elementor and WooCommerce add-ons
• A shortcode builder
• Customer repeaters
• Lazy loading posts

This plugin also allows users to apply infinite scroll based on default WordPress parameters like post type, category, tags, and more.

2. WordPress post infinite scrolling

If you want users to be able to scroll to the end of a post and load the next one, here's what you need...

Guess what? It's the Ajax Load More Plugin again!

But truth be told, there are some honorable mentions:

1. Catch Infinite Scroll: We do see this free plugin recommended often, it appears to work well. But it has not been updated in three months as of June 2022.
2. YITH Infinite Scroll: This is a plugin designed specifically for WooCommerce users. It's a bit expensive, but does include more options for use with WooCommerce.

3. Custom WordPress Ajax infinite scroll

The above two modes are fairly standard. If you've been using the internet over the last few years it's very likely that you've come across them before. It's probably why you are here looking for solutions!

But what if you want to do something entirely custom? To show you what I mean, I'll use the example of a real estate listings site.

First, let's think about who uses a real estate listing site:

• Home buyers (and their agents)
• Real estate agents selling properties

Now, let's think about how a real estate listing site works:

1. A selling agent uploads listing data (via a WordPress form)
2. The form generates a customized listing page based on the uploaded data
3. The listing page is added to the list other current listings

For the above to work properly, you'll need a web form that creates a custom post type and displays it automatically. In other words, you'll need to dig in and code a custom solution.

Unless of course, you use ours! We call it Formidable Views. There's virtually no limit to what you can build with it either. Here's another example, restaurant listings:

Formidable Views makes it easy to build a web app with WordPress. While infinite scroll on blog posts can be cool, it's a must for listing sites. You can also use standard pagination if you want too.

Here's how it works in Formidable. First thing, add any value to the Page Size field. Doing so will reveal the Pagination Type dropdown menu.

Then you can choose the type of pagination you want to use! As of July 2022, there are 4 main options:

• Reload full page: Reloads the entire page.
• AJAX pagination: Pagination without reloading the entire page.
• Load more entries: Adds a Load More button that displays more entries when clicked.
• Infinite scroll: Automatically loads more entries as the user scrolls down the page.

Wrapping up

There you go - infinite scrolling isn't so hard when you've got the right plugin! We hope you've found what you are looking for today. If you've got any thoughts or questions, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by!

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