WordPress Hack: Display Number & Next/Previous Links with wp_link_pages()

WordPress' wp_link_pages() function, used for displaying page links in multi-page posts, lacks one big feature. You can display a list of individual page links OR you can display previous and next links, but you cannot display both.

In this article, I show you how to display both next/previous links and number links with wp_link_pages().¹

Adding 'next_and_number' Option to wp_link_pages()

In WordPress 3.0, a new filter, wp_link_pages_args, was added to allow easy customization of the arguments that are passed to wp_link_pages(). We will use that filter to add previous and next links to the before and after parameters.

First, we add the filter to our theme's functions.php file.

add_filter('wp_link_pages_args',add_next_and_number');

Then we write our function add_next_and_number().

function add_next_and_number($args){
    if($args['next_or_number'] == 'next_and_number'){
        global $page, $numpages, $multipage, $more, $pagenow;
        $args['next_or_number'] = 'number';
        $prev = '';
        $next = '';
        if ( $multipage ) {
            if ( $more ) {
                $i = $page - 1;
                if ( $i && $more ) {
                    $prev .= _wp_link_page($i);
                    $prev .= $args['link_before']. $args['previouspagelink'] . $args['link_after'] . '</a>';
                }
                $i = $page + 1;
                if ( $i <= $numpages && $more ) {
                    $next .= _wp_link_page($i);
                    $next .= $args['link_before']. $args['nextpagelink'] . $args['link_after'] . '</a>';
                }
            }
        }
        $args['before'] = $args['before'].$prev;
        $args['after'] = $next.$args['after'];   
    }
    return $args;
}

To use the modified wp_link_pages() function, you can call it exactly as you did before, just use the new option next_and_number as shown below.

<?php
    wp_link_pages(array(
        'before' => '<p>' . __('Pages:'),
        'after' => '</p>',
        'next_or_number' => 'next_and_number',
        'nextpagelink' => __('Next'),
        'previouspagelink' => __('Previous'),
        'pagelink' => '%',
        'echo' => 1 )
    );
?>


The output of the above code will look something like this:

The beauty of this approach is that the core functionality of wp_link_pages() is not changed. On pages where you don't want to display both types of links, you can continue to use the next or number options.

For more information on multi-page posts and the wp_link_pages() function, visit the WordPress Codex:

• Styling Page-Links
  
• Function Reference / wp_link_pages
  

Feel free to comment or ask questions below.

1. To solve this problem, you can also use a plugin or write an entirely new pagination function of your own. But this option is cleaner and faster. [↩]