Pagination not work

Question

I have read some of the other posts on pagination, but I have not been able to make the products page work with pagination.

Two things are not working for me: 1) paginate="bottom" 2) links point to a P16 that does not exist and the system does not recognize that it is the second portion of the pagination

            <div id="container" class="super-list variable-sizes clearfix">     
            {exp:channel:entries channel="products" orderby="product_date" show_expired="yes" show_future_entries="yes" sort="asc" limit="16" paginate="bottom"}
            <div class="hover panel element {categories backspace="1"}{category_url_title} {/categories}">
                <div class="front">
                    <a href="{title_permalink="products"}"><img src="{product_image}" title="{title}" alt="{title}"/></a>
                </div>

                <div class="back" onClick="location.href='{title_permalink="products"}';" style="cursor: pointer; cursor: hand;">
                        <h2><a href="{title_permalink="products"}" style="text-decoration: none;">{title}</a></h2>
                        <p><a href="{title_permalink="products"}" style="text-decoration: none;">{product_short}</a></p>
                        <p><a href="{title_permalink="products"}" class="button-more">Learn More</a></p>
                </div>
            </div>
    {paginate}
    {if {total_pages} > 1}
    <nav class="centered" role="toolbar">
    <ul class="dots">
    {pagination_links page_padding="5"}
    {previous_page}<li><a href="{pagination_url}">&laquo;</a></li>{/previous_page}

    {page}<li {if current_page}class="active"{/if}><a href="{pagination_url}">{pagination_page_number}</a></li>{/page}

    {next_page}<li><a href="{pagination_url}">&raquo;</a></li>{/next_page}
    {/pagination_links}
    </ul>
    </nav>
    {/if}
    {/paginate}
            {/exp:channel:entries}
        </div><!--END container-->

I know from reading other posts that P16 is coming from the parameter limit="16" and the links point to http://mydomain.com/products/P16 for both the previous and the next links???

They make it look so easy in the documentation, but I cannot get it to work.

Any help will be appreciated. I will check in tomorrow hoping that my day starts off with a new fresh set of ideas - thanks in advance

Answer 1

It looks like an issue with your conditional. Remove it. Everything inside {paginate} will only be output if you have pages.

Please try to do that.

{paginate}
    {pagination_links page_padding="5"}
    <nav class="centered" role="toolbar">
        <ul class="dots">
                {previous_page}<li><a href="{pagination_url}">&laquo;</a></li>{/previous_page}

                {page}<li {if current_page}class="active"{/if}><a href="{pagination_url}">{pagination_page_number}</a></li>{/page}

                {next_page}<li><a href="{pagination_url}">&raquo;</a></li>{/next_page}
        </ul>
    </nav>
    {/pagination_links}
{/paginate}

Answer 2

How about this:

{if total_pages != 1}, I had some issues with pagination when using operator > but changed that to != solved my case.