Frequently Asked Questions

July 5, 2026

How does Auto Infinite Scroll actually work?

It reads the “next page” link from your theme’s existing pagination, fetches that URL in the background, and appends the new items to your archive – so there is no separate feed or index to maintain. It keeps a memory (in your browser’s local storage) of how far you had scrolled, so if a visitor opens a product and presses Back they land straight back where they were instead of at the top.

Does it work on non-WooCommerce or custom archives?

Yes. It is not WooCommerce-specific – it works on any archive (blog, shop, custom post types, custom taxonomies), which you target by adjusting the CSS selectors. To cover a blog and a shop and a custom archive at once, enter comma-separated CSS selectors so it matches each.

Does it change the address bar to /page/2 as I scroll, and should paginated pages be indexed?

No, it does not add /page/N to the URL. That feature existed and was deliberately removed, because it forces awkward “scroll upwards” behaviour when someone lands directly on /page/2/. The /page/N link is still present in the page’s HTML, so Googlebot can still crawl it – nothing is lost for SEO. Our recommendation is the opposite anyway: do not let bots index paginated archive pages. Noindex page 2 onward, nofollow the pagination, and set the canonical to page 1 (Super Speedy Filters does this for you). Send visitors and search engines to rich category/brand landing pages, not to /shop/page/356/.

Do the CSS selector boxes replace your defaults, or add to them?

By default Auto Infinite Scroll appends your entries to its built-in selectors, which is right for most people (you are just adding one more archive). Enable Replace CSS only when you need full control – and note two things: you must then fill in every box (CSS Wrapper, Item Filter, Pagination Wrapper, Next Page Selector), and it will only run on the one archive you have configured, so other areas such as your blog will no longer scroll. Test with and without Replace CSS.

Can I make the Load More button appear immediately, so nothing loads until it is clicked?

Yes – set “Load More button appears after N pages” to 0 and the button shows straight away. (Entering 0 used to reset to 3; that was fixed in v1.59.)

My browser slows down after scrolling through thousands of items – is that a bug?

No. Every item you scroll past stays in the page’s DOM, so a very long scroll gets heavy for the browser – which is part of why the MORE button pauses loading after a few pages. A more selective CSS Wrapper can help a little, but for very large catalogues the MORE button, rather than pure infinite scroll, is the friendlier option.

I see thousands of 404s on /page/N in my server logs – is that a problem?

No, it is by design when your page counts are removed (for example by Scalability Pro). Auto Infinite Scroll requests page + 1 repeatedly until it receives a 404, which is how it knows it has reached the end – your visitors never see these, and they do not affect SEO. To quieten the logs: tell your 404-reporting tool to ignore URLs containing /page/, or set Super Speedy Filters’ “Max Pagination Indexing” to 1, or keep SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS on so real page counts return and the probing stops.

How do I run my own JavaScript after new items load?

Attach to the auto-infinite-scroll-complete event, which fires once the extra items have been added and the pagination handled. To re-initialise Auto Infinite Scroll itself after another script has swapped the archive (an AJAX filter, pjax navigation), call auto_infinite_scroll(). See the Troubleshooting guide for worked examples.

How do I keep my filter sidebar visible while scrolling a long page?

This is a theme/CSS job rather than a plugin setting – use a sticky sidebar. A pattern that still works when the sidebar is taller than the screen (adjust the selectors to your theme):

.woocommerce-page .content-area { display: flex; align-items: flex-start; }
.woocommerce-page .sidebar {
    flex: 0 0 300px;
    position: sticky;
    top: 20px;
    max-height: 90vh;
    overflow-y: auto;
}

How do I load the plugin’s CSS/JS only on archive pages?

Use an assets plugin (such as Asset Cleanup), or dequeue the handles on non-archive pages. The handles are – scripts: history-isw, js-plugin-isw, js-init-isw, js-cookie; styles: ias-animate-css, ias-frontend-style. For example, keep them only on archive-type pages:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', function () {
    if (is_archive() || is_home() || is_shop() || is_product_category() || is_product_tag()) return;
    foreach (['history-isw','js-plugin-isw','js-init-isw','js-cookie'] as $h) wp_dequeue_script($h);
    foreach (['ias-animate-css','ias-frontend-style'] as $h) wp_dequeue_style($h);
}, 100);

(is_shop() / is_product_category() / is_product_tag() require WooCommerce.)

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