Lesson navigation
WPComplete includes shortcodes that allow students to navigate forward and backward through lessons. By combining WordPress’s Menu Order feature with these shortcodes, course creators can build a structured lesson flow without manually linking each page.
Note: When using Menu Order to organize lessons, WordPress may sometimes reverse the order (making the next lesson appear as the previous one, and vice versa). To prevent this, use order="DESC" together with orderby="menu_order" in the navigation shortcodes.
Basic Lesson Navigation
To create forward and backward navigation links, first organize lessons using WordPress pages and assign each one a Menu Order (found in the Edit or Quick Edit screen). Then add the following shortcodes:
[wpc_previous_page]
[wpc_next_page]
These display links to the previous and next lessons.
Course-Specific Navigation
Navigation can be limited to a single course by including the course attribute:
[wpc_previous_page course="Course-Name"]
[wpc_next_page course="Course-Name"]
Adding Text Before, After, or When Not Found
The following attributes allow customization of navigation text:
- prepend – Adds text before the link
- append – Adds text after the link
- not_found – Adds text when the navigation link does not exist (e.g., first or last lesson)
[wpc_previous_page prepend="Before text: " append=" (After text)" not_found="Ready?"]
[wpc_next_page prepend="Before text: " append=" (After text)" not_found="That's it!"]
Ordering Lessons
The orderby and order parameters define which lesson should appear next or previous. This is similar to the [wpc_list_pages] shortcode.
[wpc_previous_page orderby="menu_order" order="asc"]
[wpc_next_page orderby="menu_order" order="asc"]
Customizing Link Text
To change the text used for navigation links, use the button_text attribute:
[wpc_previous_page button_text="New previous text"]
[wpc_next_page button_text="New next text"]
Conclusion
The lesson navigation shortcodes in WPComplete make it easy to guide learners through content in sequence. By combining Menu Order with attributes such as course, prepend, append, orderby, and button_text, course creators can fully control how students move forward and backward through their lessons.
