According to the WordPress Codex ¹, it is possible to pass quotation marks via the parameters of the function, wp_link_pages(). This would enable users to assign a particular css class or id to the function output, thereby providing greater design and behavioral control over that particular object.

But alas, as reported several times in the WordPress Codex ², wp_link_pages() is unable to pass quotes without causing errors.

To fix this, we open template-functions-post.php and find wp_link_pages(), which is located around line #121 (for WP 2.0.2).

The fix is easy, simply edit the <p> in the following lines:

$r['before'] = '<p>' . __('Pages:');

$r['after'] = '</p>';

For example, if you wanted to wrap the function output with a <div class="foo"> and subsequent </div>:

$r['before'] = '<div class="foo">' . __('Pages:');

$r['after'] = '</div>';

Upload and done. Do not forget to eliminate the before= and after= parameters when calling the function from the loop ³.

References

• ¹ WordPress Codex: About wp_link_pages
• ² WP Support Ticket: wp_link_pages: problem with arguments
• ³ WordPress Codex: The Loop

This article explains how to reverse the order of WordPress page navigation links.

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);

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 »'.

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

<?php posts_nav_link(' | ','&laquo; Previous Entries','Next Entries &raquo;') ?>

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.

References

• 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.