Maybe you have a very long blog post, or perhaps a list that might look best splitting into each individual page? You can split your blog posts into several pages or sometimes known as a series.
The feature is actually built into WordPress. However, depending on your theme, it has to be built into it. So, this tutorial will help you through it. Please note that the WordPress theme repository actually requires this feature to be built into a theme.
If your theme allows for paginated posts, you simply have to add in your post the following shortcode:
<!--nextpage-->
In the case that your theme may be missing this feature, you need to add it to your theme. In order to do this, depending on your theme’s file structure, you are actually looking for the single.php or the file that has the code for your individual blog posts.
No, why would anyone want to do that? Well, the answer is that adding more pages in a post helps with your blog’s bounce rate. The other, it allows you to further organize your posts the way you want. The best example is having a post that is a top 10 list and placing great content for each individual item on that list rather than just have it all on one page.
People who are interested in your article will click through the whole post, regardless if they leave a comment or share. Of course, you want them to do those things, but you also want them to stay on your site as long as possible. Some sites even have strategic advertising placed in between certain items… pretty nifty, huh? 🙂
Below the code for WordPress PHP call for the_content, you will want to add the following coding.
<?php wp_link_pages() ?>
Please note that this is the basic code pulled from the Twenty Eleven theme before adding any HTML or CSS elements.
Now, if you are particular about how your pages are styled, you can add HTML and CSS to your theme to get it to look how you want it to.
For example, in Twenty Eleven, the code pulled from the content-single.php is:
<?php wp_link_pages( array( 'before' => '<div class="page-link"><span>' . __( 'Pages:', 'twentyeleven' ) . '</span>', 'after' => '</div>' ) ); ?>
We see that there has been a division layer class named page-link, adding the word Pages with a colon with a span HTML tag.
So, you can use the following CSS code, which is again pulled from the Twenty Eleven WordPress theme:
.page-link {
clear: both;
display: block;
margin: 0 0 1.625em;
}
.page-link a {
background: #eee;
color: #373737;
margin: 0;
padding: 2px 3px;
text-decoration: none;
}
.page-link a:hover {
background: #888;
color: #fff;
font-weight: bold;
}
.page-link span {
margin-right: 6px;
}
This will allow you to style the links to each page as you see fit. You do not have to have to same exact HTML code that is in the Twenty Eleven WordPress theme, but it is certainly a great base to guide you.
I’m not sure, but it will be counted as duplicate content, isn’t it?
No, because it is not repeating the post… it is splitting it into pages.
Nile, great post with some useful, little known, information. Thanks for sharing and keep on WordPressing! -Steve/wiz.
HAVE A VERY GOOD SITE. THANKS FOR THE POST. GOD YOU WELL’s
interesting articles and commentaries friend, I became interested in reading, I introduce a new blogger from Indonesia origin. greetings
yozidahfilputra.blogspot.com
I don’t really use that feature because I think most people probably won’t take the effort to click to the next page.
I don’t like having to click to a new page when I’m reading someone’s blog… don’t even like clicking to “read more”. But I use the read more feature because a blog looks so much cleaner when you get a birdseye view of what’s inside. Likewise I can see the value of splitting certain posts into several pages. Thanks for the excellent instructions on how to do that.
Willena
Hello ,
Really great topic and post.I agree with the points mentioned here.. I find something cool here.. Great share.
What a smashing tip Nile thanks, I am not a fan myself of really long blog posts either so I can really appreciate your points here. I read sometime back that 350-700 words is considered an ideal length for a blog post. Do you have any thought on this? … you’ve probably seen from your analytics which type of post length has worked best for you.
Nice, didn’t even know this was possible, but was hoping when I searched in Google and BAM there you were at the top.
Made it easy for me. Thanks!
Awesome… glad this will help you. 😀
Well I good idea if I do say so myself. IT sounds s bit complicated to me, but I’m sure I can figure it out when I need to! If I have the right theme!!
If your theme already has this function, the pages will show up as long as you have that shortcode I mentioned… and you just put that in where you type your post. 🙂
Very interesting Nile! I did not know one could do this. I may have to give this a try.
Thanks!
Kevin
Hi Nile,
I changed over to a WordPress blog 1 year ago and I’m still learning new features everyday. I did not know you could split a post into several pages by using the code and explanation you provided. Once again you have educated me on how to be more effective in by businss.
Thanks!
Hi Shelley! Your theme does have this built into it as it is a Genesis child theme. Glad to help in any way I can. 🙂
Thanks Nile, hopefully I would be able to use this code when my post reached more than 800 words. But, as of now I’ll just keep this in mind.
hi Nile Flores,
Nice post. i try this.
Very cool, didn’t know this. I can use this for some of my existing posts as well.
Thanks for the tips on splitting up my blog pages. I always had trouble with this now it will work properly!
Really interesting Niles and absolutely news to me. I must confess as soon as the topic of doing anything with code comes up my brain tends to shut off – but it’s a skill worth cultivating, so thanks for the information!
This is great. I’ve always wondered why noone has ever come up with a plugin that would split the article into few posts. Great tips as always Nile. Thanks
Not a problem. Someone asked the question on Facebook and I answered a short version of this, but figured I would write up a whole post that would be easier to link to.
Hi Nile,
Thank you so much for this awesome post.. I have some kind of long posts and i’d like to split them to 3 or more pages also i agree with the belief that it increase the number of clicks and so alexa traffic rank.
Nile, this is a great tutorial, and thank you for adding the code as well.
I am starting a new blog and the first few posts are a series. I was doing individual posts, but I can see how this might actually work better if I wanted to write the whole series out at one time.
Thanks again.
I don’t use that feature, because most of my blog articles are very short. However, that could be perfect for list posts such as, “Top five ways to…” Furthermore, I think it is amusing that a post about how to break up an article onto multiple pages… is all on one page. lol
If the article is not that long, why would I split up a page. Perhaps if it was more than a thousands words…lol
Hey Nile,
Thanks for the tutorial, I have been wondering how to do this for a while. I had looked on the wordpress codex a couple of times but it was a looking too techy for me to be able to roll with.
I need things broken down into simple steps when I first learn something – much appreciated.
Not a problem. I love helping. Thanks for stopping by and checking out my tutorial. 😀
Excellent Article, I wonder how do you change the text from default “pages” to ”
This article is divided into multiple pages
Continue reading page”
Hey Nile – great tip. I’ve used pagination on a handful of my posts that are too long. It doesn’t give an overwhelming feeling to my readers. It makes the post easily digestible and readable and yes it makes them stay on my site for a longer time (in terms of more page views) and hence lesser bounce rate! Much useful.
Awesome….nice artikel……i will try in my site wordpress..
thanks before…
Hey Nile,
I tried to use the next page code in my post and it didn’t work. So that must mean that I need to add the code to my theme. Am I correct in thinking that?
Hi Justin! You are correct. If it is not showing up, the code is not in the theme’s single.php file.
Oh I never knew it was possible.. thanks for the informative post. I used to make individual blog posts with {Part 1} {Part 2} ..etc added to the title while making a big tutorial. I should have checked this blog before 😛
Anyway thanks. 🙂
yaa really a nice post …i was looking for this as i am writing long posts these days…. THnx… 🙂
Thanks for this nice tutorial. i had seen this on many websites and now I will give it a try…
This is once of the best and informative post i have read, some people are posting articles without knowing the basic step of communication and writing skills.
You have the ability and know the way of how to convince your reader to read the whole article, very creative post, just keep it going.
Thank you 🙂
These are some of the tricks which completely separates your blog from other. Next Page gives your blog a complete different look which looks very professional in case of long posts. Thanx for sharing this post 🙂
nice article neil
sometimes we need to make our posts paginated. this also increases the pageviews.
This is a good idea having several pages instead of having several posts. It could be a better idea. As we can include so many post on this page.
I never write that much long.But Surely I wanna write few post that much long.And My current theme not having this facilities.So Your this article is really very helpful to me.Thanks for sharing this.
great post nile.
splitting your post into multiple pages can reduce your bounce rate and improve number of page views so i prefer it. thanks for the guidelines about telling us how to do it?
Since I’m on tech niche, I usually don’t have to write longer posts but when it comes to tutorials and how to guides, I may cross the limit and splitting is a great idea to increase user engagement. Well written Nile.
I usually write long content on my gadget review blogs, this splitting into pages, seems like a good idea. Does it affect SEO?
It does not affect SEO negatively. In fact splitting posts into several pages, especially for lists are really nice for traffic conversion. 😀
Hey Nile
Thanks dear for sharing this wonderful method to split posts into several pages.
But I want to know that is this method will work for home page???
I do not just like having to simply click completely to another web page at the time I am reading any good post, it simply irritates the interest of the nice content. Therefore I don’t use this feature. However it was really good to know that we can actually perform this task so simply.
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Well, this is something really new and this thing really didn’t struck my mind ever before. And splitting the post with also give benefit to traffic and SEO as well.
Great tutorial. I struggled with this for a long time before I finally got it to work and spaced out when I needed to add to a new site.
Thanks for the help!