How To Link a Series of Posts Together in WordPress

Over one year ago i created a video tutorial series for WordPress beginners.

At the time, i decided to use a sub domain and different theme exclusively for this video series. I recently moved the series to my top level domain and made a few changes as well.

The video tutorials have now been converted from pages to posts using a post type switcher and assigned to a post category named video tutorials.

The series has also been grouped together using a custom menu which includes each post item in the menu.

I also added links at the bottom of each post to the next video post but also wanted a better way of grouping the series together.

One of the best solutions for linking a series of posts together is to install a series plugin.

Series Plugin

Searching through Justin Tadlocks plugins, i discovered  a plugin named Series.

You can download this plugin from his site (if his redirect is working) or search for series in the WordPress plugin site.

Here’s the plugin authors description:

Series is a plugin created to allow users to easily link posts together by using a WordPress taxonomy (e.g. tags, categories) called “series”. It can be particularly useful if you write several posts spanning the same topic and want them tied together in some way.

Series will automatically create archives for you and offers several ways to link your posts together.

Some features:

• A widget to list posts from a particular series.
• A widget to list posts in the same series as the current post.
• Several template tags for use within your theme.
• Shortcodes to use within the post editor.

Plugin Setup

After you’ve installed and activated the series plugin, you’ll find a new module has been added below your featured image module on all Edit Post screens.

All you need to do now is create a tag for your post series.

You’ll also find this plugin creates a custom post taxonomy named series which is also added to the Posts tab under your Categories and Tags.

But why would you need all this if you have already created a specific category for your series?

You don’t need tags and categories unless you want to group posts together which include highly related content.

The advantage of using this plugin is that it adds 2 widgets which you can use to display  a list of posts within and related to your series.

Widgets

This plugin also adds 2 new widgets.

Lists Posts:

A widget for outputting a list of posts by series.

Related Posts:

A widget for showing related posts in the same series as the current post.

Shortcodes

You also get to use shortcodes which display a link to your post series archives wherever you place the shortcode.

[the-series]

Conclusion

Basically, this series plugin adds a couple of widgets and a custom taxonomy named Series.

One thing it really misses out on is creating next and previous post links specifically for the post series.

Theme Support

The custom taxonomy archives don’t work with the Genesis theme framework. This means the link to the archives for this taxonomy returns a 404 page not found error.

According to the plugin documentation, they only work if you’re using the default WordPress theme or the plugin authors theme! hahaha

You’ll find more info in the read me file which you can access after downloading the plugin.