Paginated HTML Sitemap

Question

I've got to the point where I needed to break down my HTML Sitemap into several pages. It contained 2000+ links.

The big layout was showing all post titles under category names on one page. I decided to break it down (paginate it) by alphabetical order using WP_Query, so each page would contain about 60 post titles (links). Also on every page beside the post titles, respective category links were shown and plus one other custom taxonomy.

I did it, and thought it will be OK, Google wise and Users wise. However soon after, I was bombarded with emails. Users were not liking the new paginated/alphabetical look of the HTML Sitemap. They wanted quick access to all posts from one page (or less number of pages as possible). I reverted back.

I can't keep that big page, but in the same time I have to go with the Users.

So, is there a way where I can split the HTML Sitemap into pages, and each page to contain posts titles (links) from several categories?

I can do this by creating several templates and hard-code the pagination on every template (link them), but that is the hard way.

I've looked into multiple loops, nested loops, custom queries, WP_Query, experimenting a lot but it seems I can't achieve what I want, in an elegant and clean way.

Answer 1

Haven't tested this, but here you go, lemmie know how it works. You'll needa do your own pagination links, but that should be pretty straightforward

//pagination
$offset = '0';
$no_of_posts = the_posts_per_page( false ); //Number of posts to display on each page
if (preg_match( '/page/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ) ) {
    $uri = explode( '/', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );
    foreach ( $uri as $key => $value ) {
        if ( $value == '' ) {
        unset( $uri[$key] );
        }
    }
    $offset = array_pop( $uri );
    $sql_offset = ( $offset * $no_of_posts ) - $no_of_posts;
}
//get categories
my_category_build( array(), 0 );

//function
function my_category_build( $args, $offset = 0  ) {

    //set defaults
    $defaults = array(
        'type'                     => 'post',
        'parent'                   => 0,
        'orderby'                  => 'name',
        'order'                    => 'ASC',
        'hide_empty'               => 1,
        'hierarchical'             => 1,
        'taxonomy'                 => 'category',
        'pad_counts'               => 1
    );

    //parse args
    $args = wp_parse_args( $args, $defaults );

    //do real work
    $categories = get_categories( $args );
    $cat_c = count( $categories );
    for( $i=$offset; $i<$offset+2 && $i<$cat_c; $i++ ) {
        //set current category object
        $categories[$i] = $cat;

        //drill down deeper
        $args['parent'] = $cat->cat_ID;
        $children = get_categories( $args );
        if( count( $children ) > 0 ) {
            my_category_build( $args );
        }

        //output posts from category
        $wp_query_args = array(
            'posts_per_page' => -1,
            'post_status'    => 'publish',
            'cat'            => $cat->cat_ID
        );
        $posts = new WP_Query( $wp_query_args );
        foreach( $posts as $p ) {
            //your output here
        }
    }
}