What are the best practices for implementing pagination in PHP to ensure a consistent number of links in the pagelinks?

When implementing pagination in PHP, it is important to ensure that there is a consistent number of links in the pagelinks section, regardless of the total number of pages. This can be achieved by calculating the total number of pages based on the total number of items and the items per page, and then dynamically generating the pagelinks based on the current page number.

<?php
// Calculate total number of pages
$totalItems = 100; // Total number of items
$itemsPerPage = 10; // Items per page
$totalPages = ceil($totalItems / $itemsPerPage);

// Generate pagelinks
$currentpage = 3; // Current page number
$pagelinks = '';
for ($i = 1; $i <= $totalPages; $i++) {
    if ($i == $currentpage) {
        $pagelinks .= "<span>$i</span> ";
    } else {
        $pagelinks .= "<a href='?page=$i'>$i</a> ";
    }
}

echo $pagelinks;
?>