why pagination not working in page template

Question

I make a page template, but when I click the pagination it doesn't work.

<?php

/**
 * Template Name: ashole
 *
 * @link https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
 * @package Dan
 */

get_header(); ?>

<div id="primary" class="content-area">

<main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">

<?php query_posts("showposts=2") ?>

<?php if ( have_posts() ) : ?>

<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />

<?php echo get_the_category_list(', '); ?>

<?php the_time('d/m/Y g:i:s A'); ?><br />

<img src="<?php $img=wp_get_attachment_image_src(get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), 'large'); echo $img[0]; ?>"/><br />

<?php the_excerpt(); ?> <br />

<?php endwhile; 

/* Previous/next page navigation. */

  the_posts_pagination( array(

     'prev_text'         => '<span class="fas fa-angle-double-left" aria-hidden="true"></span> ' . __( 'Previous page', 'dan' ),

     'next_text'         => __( 'Next page', 'dan' ) . ' <span class="fas fa-angle-double-right" aria-hidden="true"></span>',

     'before_page_number' => '<span class="meta-nav screen-reader-text">' . __( 'Page', 'dan' ) . '</span>',

  ) );


  ?>

<?php endif; ?>

   </main><!-- #main -->

</div><!-- #primary -->

<?php

get_sidebar();

get_footer();

Answer 1

Because you override global WP_Query with your own query_posts and you ignore page in there - all you set is showposts (which is deprecated and from wp 2.1 you should use posts_per_page instead).

But to be honest, you shouldn’t use query_posts either (especially in this case).

So how to do this? Use pre_get_posts filter to modify global query according to your needs.