scribu

versusbassz

When displaying a single post, you might want to show links to the previous and next posts in the same category.
That’s fine; WordPress let’s you do this with <code>previous_post_link()</code> and <code>next_post_link()</code>.
But what if that post is in multiple categories?
What if the user came to that post from a tag page or from an author page? Wouldn’t it make more sense to display previous / next posts from that particular set?
Well, you can do this with a similar pair of functions, provided by this plugin: <code>previous_post_smart()</code> and <code>next_post_smart()</code>.
Here’s how it works:
Whenever a visitor goes to an archive page (category, tag, date, author, search etc.), the plugin notes which archive it is in a browser cookie.
Then, if the visitor goes to a single post from that archive page, the plugin generates the prev / next links based on the information in the cookie.
Links: <a href="http://scribu.net/wordpress/smarter-navigation" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin News</a> | <a href="http://scribu.net" rel="nofollow ugc">Author’s Site</a>

Smarter Navigation

I have been looking into code this functionality myself but have been not able to make it work properly than i came across this plugin and it worked liked a charm on just installing it.



Worked like a charm

Generates more specific previous / next post links based on referrer.

ambrosite

IMPORTANT: Make sure you are using the right plugin.
<ul>
<li>Next/Previous Page Link Plus is intended for use in page templates.</li>
<li>Next/Previous Post Link Plus is intended for use in single post templates.</li>
</ul>
The two plugins have similar sounding, but different, function names. If you mistakenly install the wrong plugin, you will get a “call to undefined function” error. If you want to create next/previous links for your posts (including custom post types), please check out: 
https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ambrosite-nextprevious-post-link-plus/
This plugin creates two new template tags — next_page_link_plus and previous_page_link_plus — which may be used to generate next/previous navigation links for pages. The new tags include the following options:
<ul>
<li>Sort the next/previous page links on any column, including alphabetically, by date, and by menu_order.</li>
<li>Sort the next/previous links on custom fields (both string and integer sorts are supported).</li>
<li>Loop around to the first page if there is no next page (and vice versa).</li>
<li>Retrieve the first/last page, rather than the previous/next page (for First|Previous|Next|Last navigation links).</li>
<li>Display the featured image alongside the links (WordPress 2.9 or higher).</li>
<li>Truncate the link titles to any length, and display custom text in the tooltip.</li>
<li>Display the title, date, author, and meta value of the next/previous links.</li>
<li>Specify a custom date format for the %date variable.</li>
<li>Restrict next/previous links to same parent page, author, or custom field value.</li>
<li>Exclude or include individual page IDs.</li>
<li>Return multiple next/previous links (e.g. the next N links, in an HTML list).</li>
<li>Return the ID, title, date, href attribute, or post object of the next/previous links, instead of echoing them to the screen.</li>
<li>Return false if no next/previous link is found, so themes may conditionally display alternate text.</li>
</ul>
Extensive documentation on configuring the plugin may be found here: 
http://www.ambrosite.com/plugins/next-previous-page-link-plus-for-wordpress

Ambrosite Next/Previous Page Link Plus

The best! I wish it was updated, even though it works fine with debugging on.



I tried several of these type of plugins or other ideas and this one is the best

Creates two new template tags for generating next/previous page navigation links.

Smarter Navigation vs Ambrosite Next/Previous Page Link Plus