How To Split Long WordPress Pages and Posts

Divide The Page For Readability

In a nutshell, while you won’t find a button on the post screen, you can still use the “nextpage” command. You just have to enter it manually — and it has to be done in what is called the “code” view.

There’s more than one reason you might want to split a long page or blog posting into several. Flow and readability are the top two reasons that come immediately to mind. Sometimes, a step-by-step process just goes better when the reader has to to “click here” to go to the next step. Seems to seal it a little better. The article I was working on when this issue of splitting a page came up was one of those lengthy ones that needed a little help with the flow. I reached (moused?) for the split page button . . . And it wasn’t there!

It took several searches and explanations from a few different WordPress gurus before I was able to get a complete answer to the problem of how to split up long pages or posts.  There used to be a couple of buttons on the WordPress writing toolbar that you clicked to simply divide your page at whatever point you wanted.  Then WordPress would automatically add “Page 1,2″ etc. at the bottom of the page or post.  Clicking on the page number would take you over to the next page.

What happened to the Next Page Button?

I have to agree with numerous others who wonder why the developers decided at least one of these buttons was no longer necessary.  They left the button for “more” — which inserts a page break only in a post and only if you are on the front page of the blog.  Well!  What they took away was the “next page” button, which actually splits up page or post.  Unlike the “more” tag, it didn’t limit you to just the front page.

Thanks to The Blog Herald¹ and Adam Warner over at WordPress Modder²

In a nutshell, while you won’t find a button on the post screen, you can still use the “nextpage” command.  You just have to enter it manually — and it has to be done in what is called the “code” view.

Follow These Steps

Most people will use the Visual Editor to write articles.  That’s the view where all the little buttons show up, as in the image below.

You get to the “code” view by selecting “HTML” which is next to “Visual.”  Note the red arrows in the image below.  The view will change so that now you see the code that is responsible for rendering your article in a nice readable format.

And the buttons will change, too!

You’ll have to navigate your way through the codes and strange text to get to the spot where you want to manually insert the code for your page break.  (It would be nice for the cursor to remain in that spot when you click HTML, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t.)

When you get to the place in the article where you want a new page to appear, type the code you see below.  Be sure NOT to include any spaces.

<!--nextpage-->

It looks like this in your article, while you are still in the code or html view.

Once you’ve finished entering the nextpage tag, click on VISUAL so you’re returned to the graphical editing view of your article.

Make sure you save you post or page at this point. And remember to leave code view by clicking on Visual

You won’t see the tag you just entered, but after saving the page, just take a look that page on your website.  You should now see page numbers at the bottom of the article.

If for some reason you don’t see your page numbers, read my next section, which was written because after I followed the steps above, my page numbers did not show up. (Yikes!)

I Found The Code, Now Where Are The Page Numbers?

After discovering the code, I also discovered the page numbers were not showing up in my blog!  What the heck!  The page was actually being divided at the point I inserted the code, but I couldn’t find any page numbers to click on to take me to the next part! Oh, brother!  I fidddle around some, until the thought came to me that maybe this was theme related. (That didn’t really make sense, but hey, I had already tried everything else.)

Skip over to the next page to see how to deal with this …

Footnotes

1. The Blog Herald, Split Long Posts Into Multiple Pages in WordPress. Accessed October 25, 2009.  [↩ go back]
2. Thanks to Adam Warner of WordPress Modder for writing a definitive article, How to Split a Post or Page Into Many. Accessed October 25, 2009.  [↩ go back]

About Vernessa Taylor

Vernessa Taylor has written 114 posts here.

As a Technology Consultant, Vernessa Taylor works with both online and offline business owners. She writes about small business systems such as project management and customer referral systems at CoachNotes Blog. Follow her on Twitter @CoachNotesBlog.

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