I made the switch to Discourse recently and my community is torn on whether they like the infinite scroll or not. Some users like it, some don’t care, some treat it like an existential threat to the community. Based on other discussions I read here it sounds like it’s a common point of contention.
I understand that the developers of this software have no intention of providing pagination as an option. I can respect that. At this point, I’ve written a few plugins and layouts and looked though a bit of the code in the core github so I have a basic familiarity with the software. I’m just wondering how hard it would be to write a plugin for pagination should my community continue to resist? Is it likely that I will have to rewrite a lot of the basic core ruby code? Is it something that can be placed on top of all the existing code that could run seamlessly? Is the database structure really poorly designed for querying in a paginated way?
Just wanted to get a sense of the feasibility of undertaking this task from the people who are most familiar with the code.
I think the main issue you’d have is the constant burden of maintaining a plugin that very regularly broke as you’d have to override a lot of the UI for which only minor changes in core might break.
The issue is unlikely to be technical, almost any one time customisation is possible, more like practical, economic.
If you are still keen: give it a try and let me know if I’m wrong!
Alternatively why not take the easier route of using a forum that is page based, plenty of them?
These are the same users are upset that they can’t use their Commodore 64s. Tell them that you are very sorry and that you’re working hard on the problem and do nothing. Infinite scrolling has been industry standard for at least a decade.
Or, you might try to get them to say just why they think they want it (so that they can link to a particular place in the topic, perhaps?) and demonstrate that you can now link to a specific post and not “see the 6th post on this page”. But they’ll still be very unhappy that it’s not exactly the way it was a decade ago.
The development would cost somewhere upwards of $10k, possibly as much as $50k. Perhaps you could ask your community to find those funds? Oh and give you $5k a year for maintenance … turning a free open-source project into a costly nightmare.
I don’t see the benefit of “paging” much given you can link directly to a Category, Topic or Post?
I do think a “hybrid” component may be somewhat practical.
Every N posts in a topic you insert a “paginator”
Post 1
Post 2
...
Post 15
[*Page 1*] [Page 2] [Page 3] [Page 4]
Post 16
...
De-infinite scrolling Discourse is not a practical exercise, but a component that makes a “hybrid” paginator (even with topic list changes) is probably in the 2k-5k range.
Sam, your message makes me remind Natural breakpoints or "chapters" for long topics?; I’d be very curious to see a result of something like this. And it could be a good alternative for those who miss pagination. They often seem to miss the pagination because pages are breakpoints and nothing more.
This seems to be a way to link separate topics rather than adding page navigation to a single topic
I did make a bit of progress on the pagination. The idea was to uses the ?page=x function built into discourse to navigate between “pages” and basically block further messages from being loaded in by overriding the post-stream functions that load in the next batch of posts.
See below for more details (and unresolved issue)
I added pagination buttons at the top and bottom of each topic. One thing I didn’t figure out yet is how to get the total number of pages in a topic so I know how many buttons to display. It’s easy from the back end but I’d prefer this to be a theme component over a plugin so the options of how to do it are more limited.
With these two things, it seems like it would be a mostly functional pagination system. I’m sure there will be some odd behaviours though that will need polishing, like whether deleted posts count as a message on a page or controlling how many posts should be shown when jumping to the last page.
I have been periodically going back to this problem. Not sure if I’ll ever reach a clean solution but I think a hacky-mostly functional solution could exist
/** Prev and Next Buttons for Books or other Topic Sequencing - this feature is built by repurposing **/
/** the native Discourse feature "Reply As A Linked Topic" selector in the composer (top left). **/
/** TO SET THIS UP ON YOUR DISCOURSE **/
/** Paste <kbd>%{postLink}</kbd> in /admin/customize/site_texts/js.post.continue_discussion. **/
/** Then create 2 categories: BOOKS (for Blog Style topic sequences) and STORIES (for Regular Topic Style topic sequences). **/
/** Install the https://meta.discourse.org/t/blog-post-styling/110841 theme component **/
/** In the Blog Post Styling Theme Component Settings, assign the BOOKS Category (but not STORIES) as a Blog Category. **/
/** Then create a tag: BOOK and assign that as a Blog Tag in the Blog Post Styling Theme Component Settings **/
/** Then don't forget to paste in the below CSS! It goes in your Theme Header. **/
/** Of course the CSS here will need tweaking to work right in other themes. **/
/** Now you can create sequences of Topics in the STORIES Category which will have the nav buttons, **/
/** but those Topics will otherwise appear in the Regular Topic Style). **/
/** If you can add the Blog Styling to these STORIES Category Topics by simply adding the BOOK tag. **/
/** A new Topic you compose in the BOOKS CATEGORY using "Reply as a Linked Topic" will already have both the nav buttons **/
/** as well as the Blog Styling. **/
/** See a Demo at https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-pagination-impossible-or-just-hard/231838/16 **/
.tag-book,
.category-books {
aside.sidebar,
.topic-meta-data,
.tag-book .topic-category .badge-wrapper,
.category-books .topic-category .badge-wrapper {
display:none !important;
}
}
.tag-book .container.posts,
.category-books .container.posts {
justify-content: unset;
justify-items: unset;
padding-left: 0;
display: block;
}
.tag-book .container.posts .topic-post .row,
.category-books .container.posts .topic-post .row {
display: block;
justify-content: center;
}
.tag-book #topic-title .title-wrapper,
.category-books #topic-title .title-wrapper {
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.tag-book #topic-title,
.category-books #topic-title {
display: block;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.tag-book #topic-title h1,
.category-books #topic-title h1 {
font-size: 2em;
padding-right: 20px;
}
.tag-book #post_1 .topic-body,
.category-books #post_1 .topic-body {
padding-top: 1em;
border-top: none;
max-width: 100%;
}
.tag-book #post_1 .topic-body .contents,
.category-books #post_1 .topic-body .contents {
border-top: none;
margin-left: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.tag-book p,
.category-books p {
/* put styles here for the main text in the Book pages */
}
/* Position the Forward button at the top right of the page */
.tag-book .post-links-container,
.category-books .post-links-container {
margin-left: var(--topic-body-width-padding);
position: absolute;
top: 1em;
right: 30px;
}
/* Position the Back button at the top left of the page */
.category-stories .post-links-container {
margin-left: var(--topic-body-width-padding);
position: absolute;
top: 2.5em;
right: 30px;
}
/* Remove the link symbol from the Forward button */
.tag-book .post-links-container ul li .d-icon,
.category-books .post-links-container ul li .d-icon,
.category-stories .post-links-container ul li .d-icon {
display: none;
}
.tag-book .post-links-container .post-links,
.category-books .post-links-container .post-links,
.category-stories .post-links-container .post-links {
margin-top: 0;
padding-top: 0;
border-top: 0;
}
.tag-book .post-links-container .post-links li:last-of-type,
.category-books .post-links-container .post-links li:last-of-type,
.category-stories .post-links-container .post-links li:last-of-type {
margin-bottom: 0;
}
/* Style the Next/Forward button */
.tag-book .post-links-container ul li a[href],
.category-books .post-links-container ul li a[href],
.category-stories .post-links-container ul li a[href] {
align-items: center;
border: 1px solid var(--primary-low-mid);
background: var(--primary-very-low);
border-bottom-width: 2px;
border-radius: 3px;
box-sizing: border-box;
color: #009a49;
display: inline-flex;
font-family: monospace, monospace;
font-size: var(--font-down-1);
justify-content: center;
line-height: var(--line-height-large);
margin: 0 0.15em;
min-width: 24px;
padding: 0.15em 0.6em;
}
/* Add arrows pointing right to the Forward button */
.tag-book .post-links-container ul li a::after,
.category-books .post-links-container ul li a::after,
.category-stories .post-links-container ul li a::after {
content: " ->>";
padding-left: 0.15em;
}
/* Alternatively Use an Image for the Right Arrow */
/*
.tag-book .post-links-container::after,
.category-books .post-links-container::after,
.category-stories .post-links-container::after {
content: url('../../media/arrow-right.svg');
display: inline-block;
width: 12px;
height: 12px;
}
*/
/* Style the Back/Previous button*/
.tag-book kbd,
.category-books kbd,
.category-stories kbd {
align-items: center;
border: 1px solid var(--primary-low-mid);
background: var(--primary-very-low);
border-bottom-width: 2px;
border-radius: 3px;
box-sizing: border-box;
color: var(--primary);
display: inline-flex;
font-size: var(--font-down-1);
justify-content: center;
line-height: var(--line-height-large);
margin: 0;
min-width: 24px;
padding: 0.15em 0.6em;
}
.tag-book kbd a,
.category-books kbd a,
.category-stories kbd a {
padding: 0;
}
/* Add arrows to the back button */
.tag-book kbd a::before,
.category-books kbd a::before,
.category-stories kbd a::before {
content: "<<-";
padding-right: 0.15em;
}
/* Alternatively Use an Image for the Left Arrow */
/*
.tag-book kbd a::before,
.category-books kbd a::before,
.category-stories kbd a::before {
content: url('../../media/arrow-left.svg');
display: inline-block;
width: 12px;
height: 12px;
}
*/
Yeah I think this is the best way to approach it. If you can find out exactly what they don’t like about infinite scroll it can help steer the conversation to something more productive. If there’s functionality they’re missing then maybe it’s easy to find the equivalent, if there’s something not working about it maybe that’s something we can improve, but if it’s just being opposed to change there’s not much to be done.
The only reason i can think of is to try and count more page views as advertisers might not agree that an infinite scroll load is the same as a page view.
I find infinite scroll can be too addicting. I like pagination because it gives me a moment to pause and ask myself if I want to continue. It also breaks up long discussion threads into manageable chunks, which I find is less stressful and overwhelming for my brain.
There’s a post-Twitter microblogging platform I like that made the decision to use pagination instead of infinite scroll, and for me, that was an incredibly clear signal that they are trying to take a pro-social, healthy approach to social media.
Not sure if this was the right place to chime in. I just thought maybe I could help clear up confusion about why some users might find this feature important, since I haven’t really seen anyone providing that perspective.
I’ve used Discourse elsewhere, it’s a fine platform, and I really appreciate how much you can customize it (e.g., the ability to remove Likes, hell yeah) but the lack of pagination is likely a dealbreaker for me.
It’s not entirely impossible. I made a proper pagination plugin a few years ago (sorry, it won’t be open sourced). If anyone is attempting it, perhaps just as a learning project, I’d be happy to look at your code and tell you what direction to go in. But I wouldn’t recommend it for a production site, especially one of any size.
*edit looking at my old plugin a bit more, I don’t think I’d recommend it as a learning project either, unless you’re really keen. It’s hard.
