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wpexplorer / wpex-blogger

Blogger Free WordPress Theme
GNU General Public License v2.0
5 stars 1 forks source link

Infinite Scroll #5

Open Levelleor opened 3 years ago

Levelleor commented 3 years ago

Why is infinite scroll not available in the 2.1 version?

I don't have that option in Theme Settings. I had it before when I first installed this theme on another version of WordPress, which was automatically installed by a Hosting WordPress installer. I've reinstalled WordPress manually now and manually installed this theme, but Infinite Scroll is gone and I also noticed some other changes. For example theme functions folder is gone, instead all theme-specific PHP functions are now stored in the "Partials" folder.

Both WordPress installs were on the latest version which is 5.7.2. PHP was 7.0.X.

It's not crucial for my site to have infinite scroll, but I partially went with the theme because of it, and the simplicity of the theme, so that I could add additional features myself. Is it available in 2.1?

wpexplorer commented 3 years ago

@Levelleor - Hey, this is AJ the theme developer.

The functions folder was simply renamed to "inc" and the purpose of the partials folder is because it makes it easier to make child theme edits, any file inside the partials folder can be added to a child theme and modified and it will override the parent theme.

Honestly, I don't remember infinite scroll ever being built-in (I do see there is code for support for the JetPack infinite scroll though).

Because this theme has a footer, it seems like it could be bad to have infinite scroll because then you could never reach the footer.

I could push out an update to include some ajax pagination, but maybe a load more button would be better to ensure if you have footer widgets the end user can scroll down to them.

Thoughts?

ps: I am working on a full redesign of WPExplorer.com and I'll be adding a nice changelog to all the free theme pages so you can view the changes from each update, I'll be releasing some new/better themes and I'm also working on a 3rd party plugin to provide automatic theme updates for the free themes for people that want that.

Levelleor commented 3 years ago

@wpexplorer

Honestly, I don't remember infinite scroll ever being built-in (I do see there is code for support for the JetPack infinite scroll though).

There was an infinite scroll in another version I had installed on another WordPress instance. I have no idea what changed, but on the new instance theme is not listed in the WordPress theme search and the version installed manually does not have the infinite scroll.

Because this theme has a footer, it seems like it could be bad to have infinite scroll because then you could never reach the footer.

I could push out an update to include some ajax pagination, but maybe a load more button would be better to ensure if you have footer widgets the end user can scroll down to them.

That's still useful. Infinite scroll allows users to save the server's computer power and traffic by not redownloading unnecessary header and footers each time. Anything that achieves something like this is very nice to have.

ps: I am working on a full redesign of WPExplorer.com and I'll be adding a nice changelog to all the free theme pages so you can view the changes from each update, I'll be releasing some new/better themes and I'm also working on a 3rd party plugin to provide automatic theme updates for the free themes for people that want that.

Nice! I use Blogger theme because it's very barebones and I can make easy changes to it myself to tune it to my needs.

It is especially nice that it has this simple feed of posts and a sidebar, unlike many themes that heavily rely on specific features like thumbnails and excerpts. I am hosting an image/video website, where I literally display post contents in the feed instead of thumbnails, which is quite easy to do and maintain with Blogger.

Though I have noticed it runs quite slow sometimes. I am not sure of the source of the issue, but it's definitely on server-side since the website does not receive any HTML for a few seconds on fresh load. Caching helps a bit, maybe it's just my hosting being very slow sometimes, would have to double-check.

Would there be any other themes similar in simplicity to this one? I'd love a little more styling to it and modern design. But it's fine as is, would be able to do that myself if needed.

wpexplorer commented 3 months ago

Infinite scroll

This isn't something I would ever add, but there are tons of plugins out there for this. Personally, I don't recommend infinite scroll.

That's still useful. Infinite scroll allows users to save the server's computer power and traffic by not redownloading unnecessary header and footers each time. Anything that achieves something like this is very nice to have.

This is actually 100% the opposite. First of all, headers and footers are not "re-downloaded" it's static HTML that should be cached by your server. And infinite scroll functions use AJAX to load more posts which sends a request to the server for the data and many hosting companies don't have built-in caching for AJAX functions (only the better/more expensive ones like WPEngine provide this) - so on most servers the AJAX functions will significantly slow things down compared to standard pagination.

Though I have noticed it runs quite slow sometimes.

Slowness won't be theme related, but server related. If you are using shared hosting, it could even be another website on the shared server slowing down your site. If speed is a concern I would recommend using dedicated server to avoid this type of issue. Also some of the more affordable hosting companies (Bluehost, Hostgator, Godaddy...etc) may throttle websites if it gets too much traffic/usage, so that could also be a concern.

Would there be any other themes similar in simplicity to this one

I'm not quite sure, but you may want to consider using a block theme if you are only running a blog. Newer WordPress block themes allow you to customize everything. You could even start with the core WordPress 2024 theme and make it look exactly like this theme with some simple tweaks via Appearance > Editor. As long as you are familiar with Gutenberg it should be very easy to do.

I do plan on converting all my free themes over to Block themes and host them on WordPress.org, I'm just really busy right now with a big update and new landing page/demos for my Total theme - hopefully in a few months I'll have some time to start converting my themes over.