Two pagination styles in one site

Question

Is it good practice to have two kinds of pagination UI on the same site? On one part of the site (the blog) I'm working, I'm using the traditional numbered links with "Older Posts" and "Newer Posts" links in the belief that this suits long blog posts more.

On another part where posting is more streamlined and short a la Twitter, I'm using Infinite Scrolling, thinking that a paginated version will only break the "stream of thought" which is the experience meant for the users on that page.

Is it okay to have these two kinds of UI or should I stick to one? I considered having both pagination style on both pages but I was afraid it looked lazy and that the decision (or indecision) shouldn't be left or passed off to the user.

Answer 1

I think this is a good solution to use two paganitaion styles because each style has its own advantages in the different situations.

Like you explained, in the short posts you prefer to let the user just scroll and reveal more content which will let them consume more content from your site. This is good because the content is short and you assume the user will want to get a large amount of it.

With the regular long posts you give the user the option to think if he is willing to click on the next post link and dive into another long reading session.

Answer 2

I think it's not a good practice, but sometimes could be a good exception that work better than the "good practice".

However if you expect some of the visitors to visit both sections one after another (in a single 'session'), then most probably it's not a good idea - I wouldn't choose to have so different styles that could confuse visitors.

...But if the visitors usually visit only one of the sections (in a single session) - then it could be a "good exception" that would work for that particular case.