Wordpress Hack #5: 10 Ways to Improve Navigation
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2. How to Hack Ugly Wordpress Next and Previous Links
Since you probably own a Wordpress blog, I’m sure you already know about the default << Next and >>Previous links at the bottom of each and every Wordpress powered home page. This was a great conceptual idea (allowing people browse through your posts) but not at all what they expect. If you have say, 100 posts, users expect to browse through them like browsing google. I want links to page 2, 3, 4, and 5, with options to jump to the end, the next 5, or back again. Otherwise with default Wordpress next and previous links, to get to “page 5″ I have to click and actually load 5 pages. That’s either going to make me leave your blog pretty quick, and keep a lot of users from getting to a lot of your content.
Lester Chan has a plugin I’ve written about before (and use) called WP-PageNavi that does exactly what I just described. It displays a google style navigation like this:
I’ve been very happy with that so far, and you can style the output any way you wish using the plugin’s stylesheet. However, today I did find a plugin that is slightly better that’s called WP-Page Numbers. It’s better because it gives you 5 great style options out of the box that you can choose (so it’s prettier!) - and if you like one you don’t have to spend your time hacking WP-PageNavi’s stylesheet. Here are the options it has to choose from:
The nice thing about this plugin is that you can choose to use one of the included themes, or point to your own theme folder with your style. There are also a lot of other miscellaneous options as well. I’ve switched to this plugin on the homepage now, but haven’t updated my other template pages just yet. You will want to update the following pages (if you have them) with this new pagination navigation: index.php, archive.php, category.php, tag.php, or any other template that gets 10 posts at a time from using the loop. Go to the next hack below…
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
This post has multiple pages...
- 10 Ways to Improve Navigation
- Page 2 - Adding Breadcrumbs to Wordpress Navigation
- Page 3 - How to Hack Ugly Wordpress Next and Previous Links
- Page 4 - Wordpress Next and Previous Links for Single Pages
- Page 5 - Wordpress More Links and Excerpts
- Page 6 - How to Achieve Multi-Paged Post Navigation in Wordpress
- Page 7 - How to Add Related Posts After Content in Wordpress
- Page 8 - How to Display the Most Viewed Posts in Wordpress
- Page 9 - How to Show Most Popular Posts in Wordpress
- Page 10 - How to Assign and Show Category Images in Wordpress
- Page 11 - Sidebar Navigation Options in Wordpress
- View All
Tags: navigation, plugin, wordpress-hacks
April 18th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Thank you very much ! I’m glad you appreciate the Category Icons plugin.
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April 19th, 2008 at 4:20 am
You !!Rock I Am in search of these Post ..
Thannks for putting such a nice hack Here
Thanks
Vevin.Com
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April 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Very nice demonstration of breaking a post up into multiple pages.
This is something I love about wordpress also.
I post ebooks (old non-copyright books) and breaking them up into chapters, gives a lot of pages. Adding a few keyword links back to your home page or a page you want to push in the ranks is a great trick. You provide some useful content that is unique and add some link love back to your other pages.
I usually just make a “table of contents” and paste it in the beginning of the first page or on each page. I’ve noticed google likes this. Google wouldn’t really crawl the next pages that much until I started adding this. The plugin you suggest makes it quicker and adds more functions. I’ve downloaded it and will have to play![=)]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/4.gif)
I am noticing that your title tag for each of the 11 pages for this post are all the same, does the plugin allow you to change that for each page? I know we can change the heading titles, but didn’t see anything about the meta tag. . . that would be another big bonus.
thx,
Charles
PS. . .
I’ve moded one of my sites, thus the earlier comments here go to a non-site now….
If you like…if easy, you can remove my old email and name (Charles linked to whateveryoneneedstoknow). Can’t keep up with all the sites.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am
I did you one short with my last comment. I found a hack I was searching for, but it seems there is quite a little bit more to be found here… so I had to say: awesome lists! I just subscribed to I’ll back for more![=[]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/11.gif)
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April 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
You didn’t mention the sitemap plugin by Dagon Design. I think it makes it really easy to find all your posts sorted out by category.
I wrote about it and you can see it in action on my blog.
http://www.marketing-tools-review.com/blog/2007/06/favorite-wordpress-plugin-of-the-day-3-sitemap-generator/
April 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for the comment, Hock. I didn’t mention that plugin because I don’t think it’s very good, and also because it doesn’t belong on this hack about navigation. That’s more of an archive page, which was Wordpress Hack #2.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:59 am
[...] : JTPRATT’s Blogging Mistakes ( here & here ), Performancing Helping Bloggers [...]
April 21st, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hock, thanks for the idea.
I checked out dagon design’s sitemap generator after seeing your comment here.
It works well for a noob like me.
I guess JT has two of us that like it![=[]](http://www.jtpratt.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/11.gif)
I just posted on JT’s other article about 404 pages. I’m using the sitemap generator on that page also. It gives everything for the lost visitor to find their way again.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Charles
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May 1st, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Just a heads up Breadcrumb Navigation XT, the page you linked to, is obsolete as of January, 2008. Breadcrumb NavXT replaced it. My server sometimes crashes
but you shouldn’t be seeing HTTP 500 messages. It’s probably safest to link to the wordpress.org plugin directory page for it, located at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/breadcrumb-navxt/ since that’s where I’m actually hosting it now.
May 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
[...] April 19, 2008 by Johnny I was just checking out JT Pratt’s page on using the nextpage tag in WordPress. You can checkout the his post at making more money blogging wordpress hacks using nextpage. [...]
August 17th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Story of my life…
I just spent 45 minutes figuring out how to build breadcrumbs and hardcoding them into my template after using them here for the last few days. And NOW I finally get to the article with the plugin! ARGH!! I guess I shoulda done a search before delving in.
On the other hand, I’m finally starting to understand how PHP works… a little.
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