Yesterday we wrote an article on the site showing you how to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress. One of the tips we mentioned was splitting long posts into multiple pages. You can see an example of how we split our posts into two pages or even into five pages. After writing that article, we got a lot of inquiries from people asking us multiple questions. How do you split the posts into multiple pages? I put the <!––nextpage––> tag, but no pagination shows up. Well worry not. In this article, we will show you how to split WordPress posts into multiple pages.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
On most well-coded themes, all you have to do is paste this code: <!––nextpage––> wherever you want the next page to start. The pagination will automatically show up. Note: make sure that you are using the Text view rather than Visual view in your post editor.
If for some reason, pagination is not showing up after you have pasted the next page tags, then you would need to add the following code in your single.php loop.
<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>
Once you add that, then the pagination will start to show. There are several parameters for this function that you can use. The codex page for Styling Page-Links does a good job explaining that.
Thanks for This tut but we want to know how to make pagination for posts as we can see on your blog category not for the articles itself only
Hi guys,
may it be that this doesn’t work when using the Divi theme?
I tried, but nothing happens…
Thanks!
Your link for “two pages” goes to http://list25.com/25-hilarious-siri-responses/ and your link for “five pages” goes to http://list25.com/25-epic-fail-gifs/ … did your site get hacked or are these misleading ad links that you’re getting paid for?
Hi Dave,
These are not misleading links. We own list25 website and they are linked in reference to show users example of how Post Pagination is used. List25 uses it to display a post on two pages and fives pages.
Very simple and useful! I was really looking for this. Much appreciated!
That part works fine but I can’t get my title for the 2nd page to take the “/2/” so the wonderful pagination you just showed takes you TO the 2nd page
Hello,
Thank you for this tutorial, it is helpful!
Though I want to know what to do if I want a button directing to next page of the same post, instead of 1,2,3… page number below?
How can I do that?
My theme is DIVI and I tried the alt, shift and p option and instead it displayed the following symbol inside worpdress editor:
∏
Its for a post and I do not use the DIVI BUILDER for posts.
Why did it not work?
Sir/Madam,
Thanks for helping me many times, and I am stuck once again.
I want pagination on a page not posts. I have a page with 30 thumbnails with different page links. So, I want to paginate them into 3 pages with 12 (4 rows x 3 columns) thumbnails each. Is there a way?
Thanks In Advance
Have a nice day ahead
It works for me, but with some layout issue. The pagination buttons are not in same row.
Awesome…except no pagination is showing at the bottom and I don’t know what a “single.php loop” is. Can someone explain what that is and to add something to it?
Thank you guys for this guide, I have been trying to do this the whole day! But I have a quick question though, is it possible to make the introduction appear on every page of the blog post? Like making it “sticky” at the top of every sub-page.
Thank you for the help! Spent over an hour trying to figure this out with the Divi theme. The Alt Shift P did the trick! Finally!
thanks alot. thus was vary helpful. i was trying for hours but don’t get it.
“alt+ shift+ p” done
Thank you,
This is helped me a lot as I had no idea how to create multiple pages.
Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this instruction. PERFECT! Thank you thank you thank you! I was thinking I’d need a plugin or theme change and well… you just solved in under 3 minutes something that I’ve already spent like 30 minutes trying to figure out! THANK YOU!
Hi Wenda,
We are glad you found this article helpful. You may also want to subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
I have a Twenty Ten theme of my blog
Now, ALT+SHIFT+P works for my well. However, it appears super below the post that it takes the reader to scroll down to see the 2nd page.
How can I let it appear right after the end page of the post to avoid scrolling down. And, is there any code for a button NEXT, PREVIOUS page instead of Page 1, 2? Please help…
Thanks for this. Although need to ask, is there any plugin or code to make the pagination to appear as buttons?
Not sure if there’s a plugin but normally you would have to modify that with CSS.
Sorry if this is stupid, but if you copy and paste the from this article, it won’t work. The dashes are different from what they should be. You have to type it directly in your editor. I copied this and it didn’t work until I typed it with the correct dashes.
The comments system removed a word. What I meant is
“…If you copy and paste the “nextpage” from this article…”
Thanks, you saved me a lot of trouble.
Cheers!
Thank you!!!
Hello, I had to modify the single.php but rarely it worked on the last post where I did the modification and wrote sorry i don’t remember now exactly the shortcode, but when I introduced the short code in other posts it didn’t work and it appear on the post he shortode..
So, firsly it didn’t work so I tryed it on a post, then I modified the single.php and then it worked , probably later i did some modification on the single.php, and i tryed the shortcode on other post without outcome, but still working on the frst post i modified… it’ very strange why it work on a post and not on others?
May cache doing some “joke”
Thank You.
I was going through this article how you customized the theme for list25 ( https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/case-study-behind-the-scenes-look-of-list25-plugins-and-hacks/comment-page-1/#comment-338067 )..
List 25 uses custom editor layout and first part of it is the “List Description” which is fixed throughout the post.. How can i do that?
Cont..
I am using Masonic theme
I don’t like to use plugins for this.
So i am using above code to pagination wordpress post.
It looks like text link (Page: 1 2 3 4 5.. 10) but i want to show this in Advanced Buttons. (Advanced Post Pagination plugin provide only for Pro user.)
Please tell me how may i change Post pagination links in Advance Buttons using CSS or JS.
Dear Sir,
Thanks a lot. We have successfully add single post pagination as per your suggestion.
But we are facing another problem.
Pagination is displaying after our related posts display.
How can we display pagination above the related posts column.
Any help highly appreciated.
For that you may need to edit your WordPress theme or settings of your related posts plugin. If your related posts plugin automatically adds related posts, then you need to contact plugin support to learn how you can delay it so that post pagination is shown first. If your related posts plugin provides a template tag, then you need to add that tag into your theme’s single.php or content-single or content.php template after the the_content() tag in the code.
Why do I get duplicate content in google webmaster tools after splitting a blog post to 3 pages? And how to prevent this?
The recommended solution of “Alt+Shift+p” gorgeously worked for the theme SemPress on my blog.
Thank you so much
This is really cool and it worked, kind of. The page numbers are super ugly and there is a “glaring inconsistency”.
I did see that your demo site list25 has beautiful red squares, I was wondering how you went ahead and created the nice squares?
Would it be possible to make a demo for that and send us the link?
Also About halfway through my setting this up on my website it struggles to handle the page breaks. They are all there but putting 12 jpegs between 12 page breaks freezes up my website and it won’t allow me to load anymore images on the post. Has anyone had any issues with this crashing the database? Thanks in advance for any help
You can see the List25 CSS by right clicking on the page navigation and select Inspect from browser menu.
I’d just like to say, before anyone clicks the link in this comment, it is NSFW.
Now, on to my question.
Here is the page I want to split into multiple:
My problem is, there are around 80+ posts on that page already. How can I manually add a next page/next post/more to the page so that it can be split into multiple pages, instead of showing every single post and every single image on 1 page?
It makes it awful inconvenient. It also forces the page to take forever to load. Try it out yourself. See how long it takes to load.
Can anyone assist? What WP code can I use to break the page up? Everything I see mentions “posts” and not “pages”, unfortunately.
Your WordPress theme should automatically handle this. It seems like either your plugin or a plugin you are using is lazy loading or pre-loading all the posts. Visit Settings » Reading page. There you can select how many posts you want to show on your blog pages. If it is already set at 10 or less, then this means you should check your plugin and themes. If it is set to a much higher number then you can change that here and save your settings.
Whenever, I insert the nextpage tag in the HTML of the post I get the page number at the bottom of the post area. But, the problem is that some other plugins like author box and wordpress related posts are being shown before the page numbering which makes it invisible to readers.
Is there any way to put the page numbering just below the post area e.g. below adsense link unit in the post area?
Very Bad idea
user really hate to click 1 – 9 and 9- 1 just to read it
u maybe think about How to Increase Pageviews and Reduce Bounce Rate
but user will just close the tab
You can use “Next/Previous” instead of page numbers with the following:
`wp_paginate_links( array( “next_or_number” => “next” ) );`
Incidentally, this is my biggest issue with the core function. There’s a glaring inconsistency between `paginate_links()` and `wp_link_pages()` in that the latter forces you to choose between numbers and next/previous.
Granted, since this is designed to flip between pages of a single post versus pages of an “archive”, the number of available pages will (or should) be relatively low, but it would be nice to have a little more flexibility similar to what we get with archive pagination
Nice post, it worked for me but how do i make the Next Page appear immediately after the post instead of after the related post? what i mean is that my site related Posts showing before the Next Page Link.
How can you help?
thanks
Same problem here. Does anyone knows solutions to this problem?
That appears on my site and looks like Jetpack features get ahead of the pagination.
Hi – I’m using index.php for my posts which are all one-per-page. doesn’t work for me, so I added just below the loop in index.php but it still doesn’t work. So I saved index.php as single.php because you mention “you would need to add the following code in your single.php loop.” So I figured maybe it works only in single.php but not in index.php?
But now I can’t find where to tell wordpress to use single.php as the template for blog posts! I have a static front page. The page “Posts — Posts Page” does not give the option of choosing a template. Somehow once upon a time I told it to use the “Template Name: IndexMine” for posts. But I don’t know how or where!
Please can you tell me how I can tell wordpress to use single.php for blog posts? Then hopefully will work? Thank you!
If I understand your issue correctly, you’re actually using this function in the wrong place. Think of your site like a library/bookstore where each post is a book.
— `posts_per_page` determines how many books you put on a shelf.
— `wp_link_pages()` will turn the page in the book you are currently reading
— `paginate_links()` will move to a new shelf
It sounds like you want to move to a new shelf, in which case, `paginate_links()` is the function you need
I was thinking if there a way to do it. You guys rock. I am glad that I am following on twitter.
My website contains long post and used to split them into multiple pages using ALT+SHIFT+P and this works well on my desktop theme, but when I installed WPtouch plugin I see 1 2 3 pages and when I click on any of them it reloads page no 1 .
How can i fix this problem ?
Please contact WPTouch support.
But I also dont want to index 2nd and 3rd page and how to solve pagination in wordpress.
What if you have a featured image and only want it to show on the first page but not on pages 2, 3, 4, etc.?
Anyone have an answer?
I am using MH Magzine Pro theme. When I put the nextpage tag between the article it only shows 123…. number. I want to do it like this Pre 1 2 3 Next. Is this possible?
“If for some reason, pagination is not showing up after you have pasted the next page tags, then you would need to add the following code in your single.php loop.”
What code?
Thanks for notifying us. We have updated the article.
nope not working at all for me… ugghhhhhh whyyyyyyy
Maybe not supported on your theme
How to invert the pagination, I want create a page and spliting in multiples pages to show the recent posts? : This mode: 3, 2, 1. and no Pages 1, 2, 3.
Hi thank you very much for your tutorial. It’s work, oh ya I want to ask something about adsense, how we can add adsense below multiple pages, can you create a tutorial for that one? many thanks
Thanks for the tip, I’ve recently tried this, and the pagination shows up correctly, but when clicking the links (2,3,4,etc.), i get a page not found error. Do you have any idea what would cause that?
You might want to check you Permanent Links Structure.
Hi,
Can you please do a tutorial on how to create the “view all” function too, as it’s really very useful. I’ve seen a similar thing here: http://list25.com/25-most-expensive-private-jets-ever-made/ (http://list25.com/25-most-expensive-private-jets-ever-made/?view=all)
Thanks!
Hi,
Really love the feature of splitting pages. I also see that you have the “View All” option on list25.com. How can I add that same feature to my website? I’d really love to see a tutorial for this too.
i have the same question
If for some reason, pagination is not showing up after you have pasted the next page tags, then you would need to add the following code in your single.php loop.
Which code are you talking about? I really need this code.
Olá João Paulo,
Have you noticed how to manage pagination on wordpress long posts? This thread is not really helpful. I´m using wp 2.2.2 and I´m looking for splitting long posts in 1,2,3,4…view all pages too !
See how to add numeric pagination to WordPress themes.
how to create pagination like wpbeginner.com ? thanks
Hi, where is the code that is supposed to be pasted, seems like something got pulled out of the article?
YES!!!! I saw that Kim Komando did this and wondered HOW. So glad I stumbled across this blog. And now I’m a FAN! Thanks for sharing this information.
Yes it does if you have long articles with lots of images. You split the page, which reduces the page load time. Increased page views and lower bounce rates are an added bonus.
Great little tip – do you think this helps with SEO and rankings by lowering the bounce rate and increasing pageviews? I notice a few buzzfeed types sites using this method..