Today, while trying to configure links between a blog’s next and previous pages, I ran into a little hiccup that seems to be one of the little features that has been forgotten by WordPress’ contributors. There is absolutely no function to return ONLY the URLs of the next and previous pages. To save anyone else time in what should be a simple thing, here it is.

To return the URL of the previous page, use the following php code:

$prev = get_permalink(get_adjacent_post(false,'',false));

To return the URL of the next page, use the following php code:

$next = get_permalink(get_adjacent_post(false,'',true));

To use them, simply echo the variables $prev and $next where you need them.

<a href="<?php echo $prev; ?>">Previous Post</a> and the <a href="<?php echo $next; ?>">Next Post</a>

What if there isn’t a previous or next post?

Since our functions will automatically return either the adjacent post’s URL if there is one or the current post’s own URL if you’re on the first or last post. Use the following code to make it conditional whether to display the previous or next post link:

<?php $prev = get_permalink(get_adjacent_post(false,'',false)); if ($prev != get_permalink()) { ?><a href="<?php echo $prev; ?>">Previous Post Only Displaying If Available</a><?php } ?>

There you have it — hope it saved you a headache. Enjoy!