How to get my loop to paginate?

Question

Below is a snippet of code that appears on one of my pages called: Featured. I created a template and then respectively created a page and activated the template in the wp-admin. However when I click the button to paginate to page 2, which looks something like: http://example.com/featured/page/2 the next page shows up blank with no content (and I have plenty of content in the respective categories to display.) Any ideas what could be wrong here? Let me know if you need further clarification with my issue and/or code.

All Features

<!-- Featured Loop -->
<?php
    $paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
    $args = array(
            'post_type'=> 'post',
        'category_name' => 'featured-content, podcast',
        'posts_per_page' => 10,
        'paged'=> $paged
    );
    $temp = $wp_query;
    $wp_query = null;
    $wp_query = new WP_Query($args);
    if (function_exists('wp_pagenavi')) { wp_pagenavi(); }
    if ( $wp_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $wp_query->have_posts() ) : $wp_query->the_post();
?>

<article id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
        <?php the_post_thumbnail('featured'); ?>
    </a>
    <div class="meta">
        <p class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></p>
        <br>
        <p class="author">By <?php the_author(); ?></p>
    </div>
</article>

<!-- /Featured Loop -->
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<!-- /Featured Loop -->

<!-- Older/Newer Pagination -->
<?php if ($wp_query->max_num_pages > 1) : ?>
    <?php next_posts_link( __( '<span class="arrow">&larr;</span> Older' ) ); ?>
    <?php previous_posts_link( __( 'Newer <span class="arrow">&rarr;</span>' ) ); ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<!-- /Older/Newer Pagination -->

<?php
/* PageNavi at Bottom */
    if (function_exists('wp_pagenavi')){wp_pagenavi();}
    $wp_query = null;
    $wp_query = $temp;
    wp_reset_query();
?>
<!-- /Featured Loop -->

Answer 1

your code was a bit messy but working for me.

I cleaned a bit and it works fine for me. I used on a clean install of WP 3.5 with the WP-PageNavi plugin.

I used 2 categories (test, news) and 1 post per page so you'll have to change it to your needs.

<?php

$temp = $wp_query;
$wp_query = null;
$wp_query_args = array( 
                    'post_type'=> 'post',
                    'category_name' => 'news, test',
                    'posts_per_page' => 1,
                    'paged'=> $paged
                );
$wp_query = new WP_Query( $wp_query_args );
if ( $wp_query->have_posts() ) : while ( $wp_query->have_posts() ) : $wp_query->the_post();
?>

<article id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
        <?php the_post_thumbnail('featured'); ?>
    </a>
    <div class="meta">
        <p class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></p>
        <br>
        <p class="author">By <?php the_author(); ?></p>
    </div>
</article>

<!-- /Featured Loop -->
<?php endwhile; endif; ?>
<!-- /Featured Loop -->

<?php wp_pagenavi(); ?>

<?php 
  $wp_query = null; 
  $wp_query = $temp;  // Reset
?>

Answer 2

In functions.php

function my_theme_navigation() 
{ 
    global $shortname;

    if( get_option( $shortname . '_next_prev_or_paginate' ) == 'Next' ) : 
        // the block for next-prev navigation
        echo '<div style="float:left">';
        next_posts_link('Older');
        echo '</div>';
        echo '<div style="float:right">';
        previous_posts_link ('Newer');
        echo '</div>';
    else : 
        // the block for pagination
        global $wp_query;
        $big = 999999999; // need an unlikely integer
        echo paginate_links(
            array(
                'base' => str_replace( $big, '%#%', get_pagenum_link( $big ) ),
                'format' => '?paged=%#%',
        'end_size'     => 1,
        'mid_size'     => 2,
                'current' => max( 1, get_query_var('paged') ), 
                'total' => $wp_query->max_num_pages
            )
        ); 
    endif; 
}

Then replace

<!-- Older/Newer Pagination -->
<?php if ($wp_query->max_num_pages > 1) : ?>
    <?php next_posts_link( __( '<span class="arrow">&larr;</span> Older' ) ); ?>
    <?php previous_posts_link( __( 'Newer <span class="arrow">&rarr;</span>' ) ); ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<!-- /Older/Newer Pagination -->

<?php
/* PageNavi at Bottom */
    if (function_exists('wp_pagenavi')){wp_pagenavi();}
    $wp_query = null;
    $wp_query = $temp;
    wp_reset_query();
?>

WITH...

<?php my_theme_navigation(); ?>

Answer 3

I turned on debug in wp-config.php and it turns when my page would paginate, for example featured/page/2, the code breaking after the head loaded as an undefined function was being called. I commented out this function call in my functions.php and now my original code works. Thank you all for your help.