This is pretty trivial, but I noticed on SO that instead of an offset they are using page numbers. I know the difference is minor (multiply the page number by rows on a page or divide offset by rows on a page), but I'm wondering if one is recommended over the other.
Some sites, like Google, of course use a more complicated system because they need to track your actual search. But I'm thinking for a simple site where this doesn't matter.
What is the recommended technique?
Use offsets. If you choose to allow variable (or user-defined) number of results per page, the coding is easy.
Offsets are also useful for optimization when the result set you are paginating is very large.
This is because in some cases it allows you to do a
WHERE my_sortorder >= (some offset)
LIMIT 10
rather than a
LIMIT 10 OFFSET 880
which is less efficient. An index can let you go straight to all rows matching my_sortoder >= some offset, but when you use OFFSET with LIMIT, it needs to find and scan through all 880 preceding rows first.