---
title: "WordPress tip: Create a series of posts"
date: 2013-12-29
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2013/12/29/wordpress-tip-create-a-series-of-posts/
---
# WordPress tip: Create a series of posts
You could write longer posts, but longer posts don't work well online. Most people reading online tend to stay only several minutes on a page before clicking elsewhere. Some people have argued that the Internet has [rewired our brains](http://www.theshallowsbook.com/nicholascarr/Nicholas_Carrs_The_Shallows.html) with short attention spans.

If you want to go beyond short-form publishing, one technique is to use series of posts. I've created several series before. Look at the Series button on my navigation bar.

![series of posts](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/seriesscreenshot.png)

Previously, I used the [Organize Series plugin](http://wordpress.org/plugins/organize-series/) for creating series of posts. It's a pretty easy-to-implement plugin and works well, but in trying to decrease my page loading time, I found the Organize Series plugin consumes more loading time than I wanted. So I incorporated a different plugin that is lighter and works just as well, if not better.

In this article, I'll explain how to set up a series of posts like I have it on my blog.

## 1. Install the Series plugin

Install the [Series plugin](http://wordpress.org/plugins/series/) by Justin Tadlock. Once installed, you'll see a new "taxonomy" for classifying posts. Under the Posts section in your Dashboard, in addition to categories and tags, you'll also see an option called "series."

Now in addition to adding a category or tag to posts, you can add a series to a post.

## 2. Add a series to each post

Edit all the posts in the series and add the series to each post.

![adding a series to your posts](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/seriesadding-600x315.png)

## 3. Add a description to each series

Now go to Posts > Series and add a description (3-4 sentences) that describes each series. All line breaks will be stripped out, so don't make the descriptions too long.

## 4. Add navigation for the series

The Series plugin comes with two widgets: "Series: List Posts" and "Series: List Related." The first widget lists all the posts in a specific series you select. The second widget shows all the other posts in the series you're currently viewing.

The latter widget, "Series: List Related", is more helpful in designing navigation among your series posts. You can simply drag the "Series: List Related" widget to your sidebar area, like this:

![List Series widget from Series plugin](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/listseries.png)

When viewers read a post in the series, they'll see all other posts in the series in the sidebar.

You could style that widget to stand out more, perhaps by changing the background color.

Using the sidebar to display other posts in the series would work well. However, I wanted to have the series appear directly embedded into each post. Achieving this is a bit more complicated, and if your series contain a lot of posts, it's probably not even recommended. But here's how to do it.

Your theme usually supports multiple widget areas. Check out the widget areas by going to Appearance > Widgets and see how many widget areas you have. If you just have one widget area, you can create a new widget area by following the tips in my post here: [Add more widget sections to your WordPress theme](https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/02/07/registering-more-sidebars/).