Next/Previous Navigation for selected Static Pages

Well it sort of sounds like you are just doing it ‘wrong’ if you want to have next & previous pages – as that is really what posts ( and post categories ) can achieve easily.

Assuming you are sticking with pages, and not converting to posts, the simplest thing is to add a two buttons on each page content that links to other pages, a very manual task.

If you want to automate it, then you can use parent pages to group the pages that yu want to link to each other as a first step, then you will have to get into some custom coding ( in my opinion ) create child theme and modify page.php to use wp query to find next and previous logical links within the parent.

Another way to group pages would be to create custom page templates for each group and then write code to find the next / previous age wit that template type.

I don’t want to convert all of my pages to post, I wanted the actual pages to be static in their content. I would like to work with the pages, but I am not understanding very well your suggestions.

How do I add the buttons you are talking about in your first option?

For the second and third options, my static pages are grouped under parent pages, but I’m not following how I would implement these. What would the custom coding have to look like? (Etc.) Can you explain a little more– the only code I have worked with so far is pasting Paypal button code into html blocks, I have not done any custom coding at all so far.

How do I add the buttons you are talking about in your first option?

Use the page editor – button block –

Can you explain a little more– the only code I have worked with so far is pasting Paypal button code into html blocks, I have not done any custom coding at all so far.

You would need a developer then to code for you

I don’t know if you have any advice about where to go to find a developer for this sort of project, but with the button block– is it just a matter of pasting in the URL for the pages in the button block? Do they have back/forward arrow views?

Thanks for your help.

The button is simple you put in text and the link

if you want left arrow or right arrow you can use unicode character e.g

← and → but will have to edit in html mode.

This forum isn’t a job board but there are plenty around

A couple WP related job boards are https://jobs.wordpress.net/ and https://jetpack.pro/

If you will have someone develop code for you, you’ll want some sort of automated solution. The solution will depend on how you want paging to be organized. Posts are normally organized by date, you could do the same, so the page links are determined by querying for the next earlier or later page from the current page’s date. You can then fiddle with page dates to get the ordering you want.

There is a “menu_order” field available for use, but there is no UI feature to utilize it. That too would need to be custom developed. You might decide fiddling with dates is easier.

Hello, and thanks to everyone who responded to this thread. I am updating with content about some of the actions I have taken since the last post, mostly for the benefit of anyone else in the future who has a similar need and comes across this thread. (Especially if they are still in the not-ready-to-code zone like me. I am describing my steps in detail for that reason.)

(Note– I am using Gutenberg blocks.)

The solution that worked best for me was to use Alan’s first suggestion, which was to manually implant “buttons” on every (static) page that needed previous/next navigation. The pages have an identical consistent format: (full) image/descriptive text. I created a header block (H4) under the descriptive text with a left-pointing triangle, the word “previous”, a vertical line, the word “next” and a right-pointing triangle. The triangles were created by using right-click to access “symbols and emojis” which has a couple of choice for basic arrows. (This was easier for me than trying to code or to add arrows from elsewhere.) The left triangle and the word “previous” were hyperlinked to the URL of the previous page, the right triangle and the word “next” were hyperlinked to the next page.

(I had the hyperlinks for each page already pasted into a text document to speed up the copying too.)

I also put a “return to [name] gallery” link (as a paragraph block) below this “previous/next” line.

Editorskit is a plugin which has helped me expand my formatting choices with content and blocks; it adds a “copy block” option to block editing choices which made it very easy to just copy-paste the exact formatting of my previous/next header block and my “return to gallery” block to every page within a specific gallery. (Note: it will copy hyperlinks also.)

Though it took some time, it was worth it to me because this gave me what I needed with the skills I already have, so I can move on. It will probably be worth it for anyone who has less than 40-50 static pages to link together at a time. (I have read posts where some have hundreds to link together, which might be very time consuming with this method.)

Also, a cautionary note: on the subdomain where I was practicing my approach, I had originally uploaded a couple of very outdated plugins called “Next Page” and “Next Page not Next Post” which were the only plugins I could find that seemed to do this kind of function. They wound up screwing up my cache plugin and creating a lot of error messages. It took a few different maintenance logins to clear them out and fix the problem. Moral: don’t upload un-updated plugins! It’s not worth it.