Custom Post Type Pagination Paginates Only in URL Structure

Question

Okay. I am not on here often, but I finally gave up trying to debug this myself. I've got a custom post type, with custom taxonomies, and I want a certain number of post thumbnails to show up on a page, and paginate through the others. When clicked on, the URL paginates as it should (showing /page/1/, /page/2/, etc.) however, the same 4 posts show, and will not rotate to the older or newer posts. I've tried different structures, and pagination techniques, but all seems to have failed. Help?

Also--I'm working locally, so it's pretty inconvenient that you can't see the website itself, but I will do my best to provide further information and/or screenshots. Thank you.

<div class="masonryGalleryTheme">
<?php
$args = array(
    'taxonomy' => 'portfolio_categories',
    'term' => 'artwork',
    'post_type' => 'portfolio',
    'posts_per_page' => 4
);
$comments = new WP_Query($args);
if ($comments->have_posts()) : while ($comments->have_posts()) :
        $comments->the_post();
        ?>

        <a href="<?php the_post_thumbnail_url(); ?>" rel="lightbox" title="<?php the_title(); ?> - <?php the_excerpt(); ?>">
            <?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>
        </a>

    <?php endwhile;
endif;
?>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>
</div>

<?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Older Entries', $comments->max_num_pages); ?>
<?php previous_posts_link('&laquo; Newer Entries', $comments->max_num_pages); ?>

I'm sure this will turn out to be a simple solution--and if so, I apologize for my stupidity in advance. XD

Answer 1

I think you forgot to add this to your query args. By adding this page parameter WP will show the posts that would normally show on page=x.

Solution:

// So that WordPress will know which page to show
$paged = ( get_query_var('paged') ) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;      

// Our query args array.     
$args = array(
     'taxonomy' => 'portfolio_categories',
     'term' => 'artwork',
     'post_type' => 'portfolio',
     'posts_per_page' => 4,
     'paged' => $paged
);

If this does not work, let me know. :)