[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #21658: Meaningless adjacent post links for pages

[WordPress Trac]

#21658: Meaningless adjacent post links for pages
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 Reporter:  mdgl          |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General       |    Version:  3.4.1
 Severity:  normal        |   Keywords:
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 In WP 3.3 we removed a number of obsolete <link> elements from the page
 header leaving just those with rel="next" and rel="prev" generated by
 function adjacent_post_rel_link_wp_head() in file wp-includes/link-
 template.php [see #18128].

 This change brings the function of these links into sharper relief and
 raises several concerns. Presently, they are generated only for singular
 pages/posts that are not attachments.

 Such links make some kind of sense for ordinary posts, because these can
 be considered to be part of an ordered collection where the next/previous
 relationship is meaningful. It may also make sense for custom post types,
 depending on the use to which they are being put.

 For pages, however the links generated refer to the next/previous pages as
 they happen to be stored in the WP database and these are unlikely to have
 any meaningful relation to the originating page.

 Others have reported performance and other problems with browsers such as
 Firefox that use these links to prefetch content [see #12603, #14382 and
 #19018].

 You can see their point! If I'm viewing page "about" what are the chances
 that I will next want to view the page "contact" just because this happens
 to have the next sequential ID in the WordPress database?

 At the very least, I believe that these links should not be generated for
 pages.  Better still would be to follow Google's advice [see #18672] and
 use these just for paginated content (i.e. individual posts/pages [with <!
 --nextpage-->] or archives [including blog home]). Some potential patch
 code is available against #18660 which raised a similar issue. Links
 between adjacent posts can be left to the usual navigation elements within
 the page body.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21658>
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