Pagination is broken and I need help fixing it

I’m not sure why the first page works but the second doesn’t, though this may be a hint toward the problem. Toward the bottom of the category template page you have the following:

if (function_exists(custom_pagination)) {
    custom_pagination($custom_query->max_num_pages,"",$paged);
}

If you review the above, there is a variable called $custom_query. This looks like it’s a WordPress query that should be able to have a max_numb_pages item inside it. The issue is $custom_query doesn’t exist anywhere else on the page and doesn’t appear to be global. You should change it to reflect your query on the page, $post_query. The updated code would look like this:

if (function_exists(custom_pagination)) {
    custom_pagination($post_query->max_num_pages,"",$paged);
}

This should tell the pagination that there are a number of pages and possibly render the correct link.

Further, I would recommend you print_r the output of $link, $link_array, $page, and $paged to determine if all of those variables are outputting the correct response.

$link = $_SERVER[HTTP_HOST] . $_SERVER[REQUEST_URI];
$link_array = explode("https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/",$link);
$page = $link_array[count($link_array)-2];

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

$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => 4,
'paged' => $paged,
'category_name' => $page
);

print_r($link);
print_r($link_array);
print_r($page);
print_r($paged);
print_r($args);

In the case of $args, make sure it’s telling WordPress the correct page in the paged attribute.

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