Thanks to Pinterest, many websites think it’s cool to provide the ability to infinitely scroll down a page. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a variety of tutorials that explain how you can add this functionality to WordPress themes. However, I’m wondering if this is just one of those trends that will go away once Pinterest dies off. For sites such as Pinterest where it makes sense to have an infinite scroll, does it make sense to have that functionality on a regular blog or any other type of website? There is one issue that was brought up within one of the tutorials that I read that mentioned that this technique if done improperly would not scale well. However, Pinterest appears to be doing just fine and they are generating millions of pageviews a week.
What about pagination? If infinite scroll is introduced to a website, does that negate the need to even have traditional pagination? I would hope so considering I’d hate to be limited to viewing the archive of posts by wearing out my scroll wheel. What are your thoughts on the infinite scroll?
I have mixed feelings about it. I think it can be a cool feature, but at the same time – depending on the business, it can confuse visitors as to why the page doesn’t end.