Series Navigation and Table of Contents

Pro. This feature requires WB Member Blog Pro. The free plugin must be installed and active first. See the Pro index for every Pro module.

Help readers navigate your series with previous/next buttons and auto-generated tables of contents. These features appear automatically on posts within a series.

What You’ll Learn

How series navigation works Navigation styles and options Table of contents placement Reader progress tracking

Series Navigation

When a reader views any post in a series, they see navigation to move between parts. This appears automatically at the end of each post.

What Navigation Shows

← Previous: Part 2 - Setting Up | Next: Part 4 - Advanced Tips →

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Part 3 of 5 in “Complete WordPress Guide” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Navigation Styles

Configure the style in Member Blog → Series → Settings:

StyleAppearanceBest ForButtonsStyled buttons with arrowsClean, modern designLinksSimple text linksMinimal, text-focused sitesCardsRich cards with thumbnailsVisual, image-heavy content

Table of Contents

An auto-generated list of all posts in the series. Readers can see where they are and jump to any part.

TOC Example

Complete WordPress Guide (5 parts) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ✓ Part 1: Introduction ✓ Part 2: Setting Up → Part 3: Core Concepts (You are here) ○ Part 4: Advanced Tips ○ Part 5: Conclusion ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

TOC Position Options

PositionWhere It AppearsBest ForBefore ContentAt the top of the postReference guidesAfter ContentAt the bottom, before commentsTutorials, storiesBothTop and bottomLong contentSidebarVia shortcode in sidebar widgetAlways-visible navigation

Configuring Navigation Settings

Go to Member Blog → Series Click Settings Configure these options:

SettingOptionsDescriptionNavigation StyleButtons, Links, CardsHow prev/next looksTOC PositionBefore, After, Both, NoneWhere TOC appearsEnable ProgressYes/NoTrack reader progress

Reader Progress Tracking

Track how far readers have progressed through a series.

How It Works

Reader views a post in the series Post is marked as “read” for that reader Progress percentage updates automatically Visual indicator shows completion

Progress Display

Your Progress: ████████░░ 60% (3 of 5 parts read)

Progress Storage

Reader TypeStorage MethodLogged-in usersUser meta (persists across devices)GuestsBrowser cookies (if enabled)

Enabling Guest Progress

By default, progress is only tracked for logged-in users. To track guests:

Go to Series Settings Enable Allow Non-Logged Progress Save changes

Note: Guest progress uses cookies and won’t sync across devices or browsers.

Manual Shortcodes

If you want to place navigation or TOC manually in your post content:

Add Navigation

[bp-member-blog-series-nav]

Add Table of Contents

[bp-member-blog-series-toc]

Sidebar Widget

Add the TOC shortcode to a text widget in your sidebar for always-visible navigation.

SEO Benefits

Series navigation provides SEO advantages:

BenefitHowInternal linkingAutomatic links between related postsTopic authorityComprehensive coverage signals expertiseUser engagementReaders consume more contentReduced bounceNavigation keeps readers on site

Troubleshooting

IssueSolutionNavigation not showingCheck that post is in a seriesWrong post orderEdit positions in series settingsProgress not trackingVerify progress tracking is enabledTOC not appearingCheck TOC Position setting