Pagination For Custom Query Is Not Working - wordpress

Question

I am creating a custom homepage template in which I am trying to show posts with navigation.
Here is what I have followed.
Created a file homepage.php and gave the template name as "HomePage".
Created a page "Home" from dashboard and assigned this template "HomePage".
Then from settings > reading, chosen static front page "Home".
Here is my code for querying posts.
<div class="posts-container">
<?php query_posts('post_type=post&posts_per_page=2&post_status=publish&paged='. get_query_var('paged')); ?>
<?php if(have_posts()): ?>
<?php while (have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post">
<h4 class="entry-title"><?php the_title(); ?></h4>
</div>
<?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?>
</div>
<div class="pagination-nav">
<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link(__('Next »','example')); ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link(__('« Previous','example')); ?></div>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
Now, on clicking the links generated by pagination functions, I am getting redirected to the page where I was first. While the URL gets updated like
http://localhost/mysite/?paged=2
Lets say if there are 4 posts (post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4) that and the recent ones are post 4 and post 3 respectively, then I cannot get to post 1 and post 2. Both of the pages
http://localhost/mysite
http://localhost/mysite/?paged=2
show me only the post 4 and post 3. What can I do to solve this?

Answer 1

For a static front page you need to check for the page var too, in this way:
if ( get_query_var('paged') ) { $paged = get_query_var('paged'); }
elseif ( get_query_var('page') ) { $paged = get_query_var('page'); }
else { $paged = 1; }
query_posts('...&paged=' . $paged);

Answer 2

This was the solution that worked for me. I had to re-write the query and have used WP Query this time.
<?php
global $wp_query, $paged;
$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
$query_args = array (
'post_type' => 'post',
'post_status'=>'publish',
'posts_per_page' => 4, //for testing purposes
'paged' => $paged,
);
$wp_query = new WP_Query($query_args);
if ( $wp_query->have_posts() ) :
while ( $wp_query->have_posts()) :
$wp_query->the_post();
?>
<div class="post">
<?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) { ?>
<a class="entry-image" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
<?php the_post_thumbnail(); } ?>
</a>
<h4 class="entry-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
<?php the_title(); ?>
</a></h4>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<div class="pagination-nav">
<div class="alignleft">
<?php next_posts_link(__('Oudere artikelen')); ?>
</div>
<div class="alignright">
<?php previous_posts_link(__('Newer')); ?>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- /posts-container -->
<?php endif; ?>
<?php wp_reset_postdata(); ?>
And Whola!, this one worked.
Might be useful for someone else.