Pagination function doesn't work in WordPress

Question

Despite following exactly the example in the codex, the page I arrive at when clicking the pagination next link (http://localhost:3000/my_project/news/page/2/) doesn't exist ("page not found").

Why?

$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; echo 'paged = ' . $paged;
$regular_posts = new WP_Query('posts_per_page=3&paged=' . $paged);
while ($regular_posts->have_posts()): $regular_posts->the_post(); 
  the_title();
endwhile;
echo get_next_posts_link('Older Entries', $regular_posts->max_num_pages);

This code is contained in my "home.php" template, managing the "News" page which I created in dashboard and set as "Posts page" in "Reading Settings".

Answer 1

A static homepage is slightly different from an archive, as it page parameter instead of paged.

The Codex Pagination page includes this code for static homepages, which will actually work in all cases (i.e. even archive pages) because its checking for both parameters:

if ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'paged' ); }
elseif ( get_query_var( 'page' ) ) { $paged = get_query_var( 'page' ); }
else { $paged = 1; }

But if you only need it to work on the homepage, Changing your code for the $paged variable to the following should work too:

$paged = (get_query_var('page')) ? get_query_var('page') : 1;