Search results stuck on page 1

Question

The problem statement

For some reason when the user does a search the results page (search.php) only show the first page results. The pagination (next and previous links) also believes its on page 1.

The URL structure is https://www.domianname.com/page/1?s=query.

You can change out the number for 2, 3, 4 etc and it won't 404 but it will still show page 1 results.

Is this an issue with the WP_Query or could it be the custom URL structure (/page/1)?

Snippet of the search.php file

<?php
 $paged = $page
 $loop = new WP_Query(
  array(
   'posts_per_page' => '20',
   'paged' => $paged
  )
 );
 if ( $loop->have_posts() ) { ?>
  <div class="results">
   <?php while ( $loop->have_posts() ) { 
    $loop->the_post(); 
    $post_id = $post->ID;
   ?>
    <div class="article">
     <h3><a href="<?php the_permalink();?>">the_title(); ?></a></h3>
     <!-- A bunch of if conditions depending on post type-->
    </div><!--close article-->
   <?php } ?>
  </div><!--close results-->
  <?php 
   if( get_previous_posts_link() || get_next_posts_link() ) {
  ?> 
  <div class="navigation"> 
   <?php
   if( get_previous_posts_link() ) {
    echo '<span class="newer">'.get_previous_posts_link( "Previous Page", $loop->max_num_pages).'</span>';
    }; 
    if( get_next_posts_link() ) {
     echo '<span class="older">'.get_next_posts_link( "Next Page", $loop->max_num_pages).'</span>';
    }; 
  ?> 
</div> 
<?php } ?>
<?php } else { ?>
 <p>There are no results for that search query. Please search again.</p>
<?php } ?>

Answer 1

You are setting $paged = $page which I suspect may be at least one of your issues.

Try changing that line to:

$paged = ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) ? get_query_var( 'paged' ) : 1;

or if the page is static:

$paged = ( get_query_var( 'page' ) ) ? get_query_var( 'page' ) : 1;

It is also worth noting that by creating a custom search query you are ignoring/altering the main query after it has run, which can cause issue with the pagination links. It is usually better to amend the query in functions.php via "pre_get_posts" before the query is executed rather than in the search.php page template after-the-fact.

You may need to include the following after the loop.

// Reset the $post data to the current post in main query.
wp_reset_postdata();

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/pre_get_posts/ https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_reset_postdata/