[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #4814: Pagination broken on themes

[Making WordPress.org]

#4814: Pagination broken on themes
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 Reporter:  jonoaldersonwp   |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect           |      Status:  reopened
 Priority:  highest omg bbq  |   Milestone:
Component:  Theme Directory  |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  seo              |
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Comment (by jonoaldersonwp):

 We can't move (further) away from server-side rendering unless we have a
 pre-rendering/isomorphic solution in place. Given that's unlikely to
 happen (and that it'd be an equivalent amount of effort just to do this
 right), then we need to make this crawlable, indexable and accessible.
 Relying on fudges and no-js hacks isn't a viable option. We need the
 behaviour to be correct and optimal without JS, and then to layer in
 progressive enhancement. Anything else will (continue to) damage our
 discoverability, market share, reputation, etc.

 Anoedotally, we're already seeing examples where the current approach
 causes unforeseen issues because it's over-engineered. E.g., our recent
 addition of lazy loading for images was ineffectual, because we load theme
 tiles in an unnecessarily complex manner. We're likely to unearth
 ''hundreds'' of such issues as we try and get best practices in place for
 SEO and accessibility.

 Our simplest option is to use a server-side solution which behaves like a
 conventional WordPress archive (posts per page, pagination, adaptive
 metadata, etc). On top of that, we can add a JS solution for lazy-loading
 additional pages as the user scrolls.

 With regards to infinite scrolling, we'd need to:
 - Use the intersectionObserver API to determine when to lazily load in the
 next page's results (NOT scroll detection / viewport positioning, etc;
 though [https://github.com/w3c/IntersectionObserver/tree/master/polyfill
 polyfill] as necessary
 - Use the history API to update the URL (and meta) to /page/n/ as the
 browser reaches/triggers those boundaries (in both directions).

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4814#comment:23>
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