How to Implement Custom Post Navigation in WordPress

Posted on 17th June 2023

WordPress is a great content management system that allows you to easily create and manage your website or blog’s content. One of the great features of WordPress is its built-in post navigation system, which allows you to easily navigate between posts on your site.

However, sometimes you may want to customize the post navigation system on your WordPress site. For example, you may want to add custom navigation links to specific posts, or you may want to change the order in which the post navigation links are displayed.

In this article, we will show you how to easily customize the post navigation system in WordPress.

Adding Custom Navigation Links to WordPress Posts

The first thing you need to do is edit the post in which you want to add custom navigation links. Simply click on the ‘Edit Post’ link below the post title.

On the post editing screen, you will see the default WordPress post editor. You can add your custom navigation links in the post editor using the ‘Link’ button.

Simply click on the ‘Link’ button, and enter the URL of the post you want to link to in the ‘URL’ field. Then, enter the link text in the ‘Link Text’ field.

Once you are done, click on the ‘Add Link’ button. WordPress will now insert the custom link into your post.

You can repeat the process to add more custom links to your post.

Changing the Order of Post Navigation Links

By default, WordPress displays the post navigation links in chronological order. That is, the older posts are displayed before the newer posts.

However, you can easily change the order of the post navigation links. Simply go to the ‘Settings’ » ‘Reading’ page in your WordPress admin area.

On the ‘Reading’ page, you need to select the ‘Reverse the order of the post navigation links’ option. Once you select this option, WordPress will reverse the order of the post navigation links, and display the newer posts before the older posts.

Adding Custom Navigation Links to Specific Posts

If you want to add custom navigation links to specific posts only, then you can do that using the ‘Post Navigation Links’ plugin.

First, you need to install and activate the ‘Post Navigation Links’ plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin adds a new ‘Post Navigation Links’ meta box to your WordPress post editor.

You can now add custom next and previous post links for your post. Simply enter the post ID or post slug in the ‘Next Post ID’ and ‘Previous Post ID’ fields, respectively.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Update Post’ button to save your changes.

That’s it. You can now visit your single post to see the custom post navigation links in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to customize the post navigation system in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add custom pagination in WordPress.

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As you can see, the default WordPress post navigation is pretty basic. It just displays the Previous and Next post links.

If you want to add some more customization to your post navigation, then you can use the following code.

This code will add the post title, thumbnail, and post date to the post navigation.

First, you need to add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

function custom_post_navigation() { if( is_singleton() ) return; global $post; $previous = ( is_attachment() ) ? get_post( $post->post_parent ) : get_adjacent_post( false, ”, true ); $next = get_adjacent_post( false, ”, false ); if( ! $next && ! $previous ) return; echo ‘

‘; }

Next, you need to call the custom_post_navigation() function in your single.php file.

You can do this by adding the following code to your single.php file:

This code will add the following to your post navigation:

The post title

The post thumbnail

The post date

As you can see, the default WordPress post navigation is pretty basic. It just displays the Previous and Next post links.

If you want to add some more customization to your post navigation, then you can use the following code.

This code will add the post title, thumbnail, and post date to the post navigation.

First, you need to add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

function custom_post_navigation() { if( is_singleton() ) return; global $post; $previous = ( is_attachment() ) ? get_post( $post->post_parent ) : get_adjacent_post( false, ”, true ); $next = get_adjacent_post( false, ”, false ); if( ! $next && ! $previous ) return; echo ‘

‘; }

Next, you need to call the custom_post_navigation() function in your single.php file.

You can do this by adding the following code to your single.php file:

This code will add the following to your post navigation:

The post title

The post thumbnail

The post date

You can style the post navigation by adding the following CSS to your theme’s style.css file:

.pagination { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: center; } .pagination a { display: flex; align-items: center; width: 50%; text-decoration: none; } .pagination a .meta-nav { margin: 0 10px; } .pagination .nav-previous { order: 1; } .pagination .nav-next { order: 2; text-align: right; }

This CSS will style the post navigation like this:

As you can see, the post navigation is now much more user-friendly and informative.

If you want to take this one step further, you can add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file.

This code will add a “Continue Reading” link to the post navigation.

function custom_post_navigation_continue_reading() { if( is_singleton() ) return; global $post; $previous = ( is_attachment() ) ? get_post( $post->post_parent ) : get_adjacent_post( false, ”, true ); $next = get_adjacent_post( false, ”, false ); if( ! $next && ! $previous ) return; echo ‘

‘; }

You can then call the custom_post_navigation_continue_reading() function in your single.php file like this:

This code will add a “Continue Reading” link to the post navigation like this:

As you can see, the post navigation is now much more user-friendly and informative.

If you want to take this one step further, you can add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file.

This code will add a “Continue Reading” link to the post navigation.

function custom_post_navigation_continue_reading() { if( is_singleton() ) return; global $post; $previous = ( is_attachment() ) ? get_post( $post->post_parent ) : get_adjacent_post( false, ”, true ); $next = get_adjacent_post( false, ”, false ); if( ! $next && ! $previous ) return; echo ‘

‘; }

You can then call the custom_post_navigation_continue_reading() function in your single.php file like this:

This code will add a “Continue Reading” link to the post navigation like this:

As you can see, the post navigation is now much more user-friendly and informative.