If you are looking for the quickest way to add pagination in a WordPress post so that you split it into several pages this should be the guide for you.
There are several reasons why you may want to add pagination in WordPress posts but the most common reason is to showcase different content within a single WordPress post and reduce the number of times a user has to load different posts.
WordPress Post Split into Multiple Pages
Luckily WordPress comes with a pagination option that helps to split WordPress posts into multiple pages and this can also be applied to split the page into several pages as well.
Different users have varying experiences with the split pages and for me, I find it cumbersome especially when the content is in a list post and you have to click on the next and previous buttons to see the other item on a list as shown on this image:
It is common to see a WordPress post about a list of things split into multiple pages and it becomes cumbersome to move from one page to another.
In my view, this increases leads to poor user experience although it increases the page views on your website.
If this is what you want to implement to split a post into multiple pages, you need to add pagination in WordPress posts that will result in multiple pages as you will see in my example.
Add Pagination in WordPress Post
To add pagination in WordPress posts, you should use the <!—nextpage-- >
HTML comment that splits the post into pages.
This comment should be added to the HTML view of your post and this should work seamlessly.
So on your WordPress classic editor click on the HTML view as shown in the image below and add the <!—nextpage-- >
tag the point where you want to split the page as I have shown in the image below:
When you add this tag in the text mode / HTML mode and update you should see the changes on the front side as shown below where the post has been split into two pages:
Split WordPress Post into Multiple Pages
You can add more tags to add pagination in WordPress posts and split it further into multiple pages as I have added on the image below:
This will result in splitting the post into several pages and will add pagination in the WordPress post that has the numbers as shown in the image below:
You can style the pagination numbers appropriately to improve the appearance or they can take the same classes used in your other pagination as I explained in this post on how to add numeric pagination in WordPress.
Add Pagination in WordPress Post Gutenberg Editor
This pagination can also be added to the Gutenberg WordPress editor and inside the text block. You should click on the HTML mode as shown below and add the next tag the same way you added in the classic editor
To create beautiful pagination you can add some styles
If you like this styled WordPress post pagination on the Storefront WooCommerce theme, you can use the CSS code below to add the same pagination styles to your WordPress post pagination:
.post-page-numbers { background: #b345b3; padding: 10px 20px; color: #fff; }
Conclusion
To add pagination in a WordPress post does not require you to write any special code since you have the next tag that can be added to the WordPress post content in the HTML mode to split the post into multiple pages.
Joe is an experienced full-stack web developer with a decade of industry experience in the LAMP & MERN stacks, WordPress, WooCommerce, and JavaScript – (diverse portfolio). He has a passion for creating elegant and user-friendly solutions and thrives in collaborative environments. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring new tech trends, tinkering with new tools, and contributing to open-source projects. You can hire me here for your next project.