Reversing WordPress Page Navigation Order

♦ Posted by Jeff Starr in PHP, WordPress

Updated January 13, 2025 • 6 comments

This article explains how to reverse the order of WordPress archive navigation links. For more information about WP’s navigation tags, check out this post.

Step 1

To reverse the default (backward) order of page navigation in WordPress, open the file template-functions-links.php (in WP 2.0) or link-template.php (in WP 2.1/2.2) and scroll down to the last function, posts_nav_link()¹. Next, find the last if statement and switch the order of the following two lines:

previous_posts_link($prelabel);
   [ ignore this line ]
next_posts_link($nxtlabel, $max_page);

Step 2

Next, within the first line of the same function (beginning with function posts_nav_link), switch the order of the variables $prelabel='« Previous Page' and $nxtlabel='Next Page »'.

Step 3

Finally, within the loop, make sure you are calling the function with the usual parameters in place. Something like:

<?php posts_nav_link(' | ','« Previous Entries','Next Entries »') ?>

That’s it! Your post navigation links (for index and category views) should now operate according to the following principle: left links point to older posts and right links post to newer posts.

Footnotes

¹ Not to be confused with previous_post_link() and next_post_link(), which provide navigational links to older individual posts and newer individual posts, respectively. Oddly enough, in the case of post-by-post navigation, WordPress gets it right: left links point to older posts and right links post to newer posts; however, this is not the case with page-by-page navigation, in which WordPress adopts the reverse strategy. For more information, check out WordPress Post Navigation Redux (New Tags!).

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Web Developer. Book Author. Secretly Important.

6 responses to “Reversing WordPress Page Navigation Order”

Ka82 2006/08/02 6:31 am

Thanks a lot, looks like it works at my homepage.

Perishable 2006/08/02 10:41 am • Post Author

You are quite welcome!

DLa 2006/09/12 12:37 am

Is there an easy way to reverse the entire collection of posts so that the oldest post comes first?

Perishable 2006/09/12 12:46 am • Post Author

DLa,

As a matter of fact, adding the parameter, "&order=ASC" to the end of the query string accomplishes such a trick. Simply include the following line of PHP immediately before the WordPress Loop:

<?php query_posts($query_string . "&order=ASC"); ?>

Ryan 2007/06/26 2:34 pm

How would I get my posts to display in a random order? I can find info anywhere and this is about as close as I’ve gotted:) and help would be appreciated

Ryan 2007/06/26 9:10 pm

Sorry for the horribly typed question. I was in a huge rush. You seem to have the php. brain that can answer my question.

How do you ‘shuffle’ posts that are in a category. So that each time the category is viewed they are in a new order??

Thanks in advance

Comments are closed for this post. Something to add? Let me know.

Ka82 2006/08/02 6:31 am

Thanks a lot, looks like it works at my homepage.
Perishable 2006/08/02 10:41 am • Post Author

You are quite welcome!
DLa 2006/09/12 12:37 am

Is there an easy way to reverse the entire collection of posts so that the oldest post comes first?
Perishable 2006/09/12 12:46 am • Post Author

DLa,

As a matter of fact, adding the parameter, "&order=ASC" to the end of the query string accomplishes such a trick. Simply include the following line of PHP immediately before the WordPress Loop:

<?php query_posts($query_string . "&order=ASC"); ?>
Ryan 2007/06/26 2:34 pm

How would I get my posts to display in a random order? I can find info anywhere and this is about as close as I’ve gotted:) and help would be appreciated
Ryan 2007/06/26 9:10 pm

Sorry for the horribly typed question. I was in a huge rush. You seem to have the php. brain that can answer my question.

How do you ‘shuffle’ posts that are in a category. So that each time the category is viewed they are in a new order??

Thanks in advance