Post Navigation Preview

Introduction

The Post Navigation Preview is a powerful tool in WordPress that allows you to preview and customize the navigation links between posts on your website. This feature is particularly useful for bloggers and content creators who want to provide their readers with a seamless and user-friendly experience. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to use the Post Navigation Preview and customize your post navigation links to suit your needs.

What is the Post Navigation Preview?

The Post Navigation Preview is a WordPress feature that allows you to preview the navigation links between posts on your website. This feature is also known as "prev/next" navigation. It enables you to customize the text, links, and styles of the previous and next post navigation links, making it easy to create a consistent and professional-looking design.

Using the Post Navigation Preview

To use the Post Navigation Preview, you need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Enable the Post Navigation Preview

To enable the Post Navigation Preview, you need to add the following code to your theme's functions.php file:

function custom_post_navigation() {
    wp_bootstrap_pagination();
}
add_action('edit_form_advanced', 'custom_post_navigation');

This code will enable the Post Navigation Preview on your website. If you're using a page builder like Elementor or Beaver Builder, you may need to use a different method to enable the Post Navigation Preview.

Step 2: Configure the Post Navigation Preview

Once you've enabled the Post Navigation Preview, you can configure it to suit your needs. You can do this by adding the following code to your theme's functions.php file:

function custom_post_navigation_config() {
    $post_navigation_config = array(
        'prev_text' => 'Previous post',
        'next_text' => 'Next post',
        'prev_link' => '<a href="%link%">%text%</a>',
        'next_link' => '<a href="%link%">%text%</a>'
    );
    return $post_navigation_config;
}
add_filter('post_navigation_config', 'custom_post_navigation_config');

This code will configure the Post Navigation Preview to display the text "Previous post" and "Next post" on the navigation links, and use HTML links to style the links.

Step 3: Add the Post Navigation Preview to Your Theme

To add the Post Navigation Preview to your theme, you need to use the get_the_post_navigation() function in your theme's index.php or single.php file. Here's an example of how to use this function:

<?php
if (function_exists('get_the_post_navigation')) {
    get_the_post_navigation(array(
        'prev_text' => 'Previous post',
        'next_text' => 'Next post'
    ));
}
?>

This code will display the Post Navigation Preview on your website. You can customize the text and links by adding the prev_text and next_text parameters to the get_the_post_navigation() function.

Step 4: Customize the Post Navigation Preview

Once you've added the Post Navigation Preview to your theme, you can customize it to suit your needs. You can use CSS to style the links, or add custom HTML and JavaScript code to enhance the navigation experience. Here are a few examples of how to customize the Post Navigation Preview:

• Add custom CSS to style the links:

  
  .post-navigation a {
  background-color: #f0f0f0;
  color: #666;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc;
  padding: 10px;
  font-size: 16px;
  font-weight: bold;
  }

.post-navigation a:hover { background-color: #ccc; color: #333; }

* Add custom HTML to enhance the navigation experience:
```html
<div class="post-navigation">
    <a href="<?php echo get_previous_post_permalink();?>" title="<?php echo get_previous_post()->post_title;?>" rel="prev"><?php echo get_previous_post()->post_title;?></a>
    <span class="meta-nav"> ← </span>
    <a href="<?php echo get_next_post_permalink();?>" title="<?php echo get_next_post()->post_title;?>" rel="next"><?php echo get_next_post()->post_title;?></a>
</div>

• Add custom JavaScript code to enhance the navigation experience:

  <script>
  jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
      $(document).on('click', '.post-navigation a', function(event) {
          event.preventDefault();
          var href = $(this).attr('href');
          window.location.href = href;
      });
  });
  </script>

  Conclusion

In this tutorial, we've covered the steps to use the Post Navigation Preview in WordPress. We've shown you how to enable the Post Navigation Preview, configure it to suit your needs, add it to your theme, and customize it to enhance the navigation experience. By following these steps, you can create a professional-looking and user-friendly navigation experience on your WordPress website.