Creating a Clickable Table of Contents for Your Blog Is Easy Now!

Creating a Clickable Table of Contents (TOC) used to require hiring a programmer “back in the Old Days.” BUT NOW, there is a plug-in that you can install, activate, and use easily. Hopefully, it encourages readers to scroll deeply into your content, rather than read only the first couple of sentences. First, I’ll show you a TOC right here, followed by a “how-to” set of instructions.

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Creating a Clickable Table of Contents for WordPress Websites – A Step-by-Step Guide

Two Methods: Plugin (Easiest) or Manual (More Control)

METHOD 1 – Use a Plugin 

Step 1: Log in to your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Go to the left sidebar → click “Plugins” → click “Add New.”

Step 3: In the search box, type: “Easy Table of Contents.”

Step 4: Find the plugin by Magazine3. (It’s the most popular, free, and beginner-friendly.) Click “Install Now.”

Step 5: Once installed, click “Activate.”

Step 6: Go to Settings → Table of Contents in your left sidebar.

Step 7: Under “Enable Support,” check the box for “Posts” (and Pages if you want it there too).

Step 8: Under “Auto Insert,” check “Posts,” which tells it to add the TOC automatically to every post. (You can turn it off per post individually later.) Check the “Pages” box if you want TOCs on your pages.

Step 9: Set “Show when” to something like “4 or more headings” so it only appears on longer posts.

Step 10: Go to the bottom of the screen (below many options) and click “Save Changes.”

Step 11: Now, either write or open an existing blog post.

Step 12: Format your sections using Heading blocks. Use H2 for main sections, H3 for subsections. The plugin reads those headings and bases the TOC on them.

Step 13: Preview your post. The TOC should appear near the top, with clickable links to each section.

That’s it. The plugin does the rest.

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METHOD 2 – Manual TOC (No Plugin, Using Block Editor)

Use this if you want full control over what appears in the TOC. For this example, we’ll pretend we’re working with a post about the energy healing method, Reiki.

Step 1: Write your post with clearly labeled Heading blocks (H2/H3) for each section.

Step 2: Click on your first Heading block (e.g., “What Is Reiki?”).

Step 3: In the right sidebar, look for the “Advanced” section (scroll down in the block settings panel). Click to expand it.

Step 4: In the “HTML Anchor” field, type a short, lowercase, hyphenated ID, such as “what-is-reiki?”. This is the anchor to which your TOC link will jump.

Step 5: Repeat Steps 2–4 for every heading you want in your TOC.

Step 6: At the top of your post (after your hook intro), add a List block or a Classic block.

Step 7: Type your TOC items as a list. For each item, select the text, click the Link button in the toolbar, and type #what-is-reiki (the # plus the anchor name you set in Step 4).

Step 8: Repeat for each TOC entry.

Step 9: Preview — clicking each TOC item should scroll the page to the matching heading.

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Which Method Should You Use In Creating a Clickable Table of Contents for WordPress Websites?

1. For someone like me, whose workflow involves writing 1K–3K posts regularly, the plugin method is the right call. It takes about 5 – 10 minutes to set up once, and then it runs automatically on every post as long as you use Heading blocks (which you should be doing anyway for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
2. The manual method is useful when you want a TOC for only part of a page, or when you want to customize the wording of TOC entries to differ from your actual heading text.
   

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Is the Process for Creating a Clickable Table of Contents the Same for Other Website Platforms?

NO!

The process varies by platform. Here’s a quick overview of the most common ones.

Squarespace

No native TOC feature and no plugin ecosystem. Your options are either the manual anchor method (similar to WordPress Method 2, but done through Squarespace’s link settings) or embedding a custom HTML/CSS block with your TOC coded by hand. It’s doable, but it’s more tedious than WordPress.

Wix

Wix has an anchor tool built in. You place an “Anchor” element at each section, name it, then link your TOC list items to those anchors. It’s visual and fairly intuitive…requires no coding… but you build the TOC list manually every time. There’s no auto-generation.

Ghost

Ghost (popular with newsletter/blog writers) doesn’t auto-generate a TOC natively, but some themes include one built in. If yours doesn’t, you’d use the manual anchor method inside Ghost’s editor, or inject code via the “Code Injection” settings. More technical than WordPress.

Substack

Substack currently has no TOC support, no anchors, no jump links, and no plugins. The format is intentionally simple. You can simulate a TOC by listing your sections at the top as plain text, but none of it is clickable. A real limitation if you’re writing long-form there.

Medium

Same situation as Substack –  no clickable TOC support. Medium controls the formatting tightly. Some writers fake a visual TOC with bold text, but readers can’t click to jump to a section they want to view. For long posts on Medium, readers must just scroll to search for specific content.

Notion (published as a webpage)

Notion has a built-in TOC block you can add with one click. It auto-generates from your headings and is clickable. It’s one of the easiest implementations of any platform and, ironically, is better than most dedicated blogging tools.

Google Docs (if you share docs publicly)

Google Docs has a native TOC feature under Insert → Table of Contents. It’s clickable within the doc. If you publish or share a Doc as a webpage, the TOC links still work.

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The Common Thread Across All Platforms:

Every clickable TOC – regardless of platform – relies on the same underlying concept: anchors. A heading gets a unique ID, and a TOC link points to that ID. Platforms differ, however, in how much of that work they do for you. WordPress, utilizing a plugin that you install, sits at the easy end. Substack and Medium don’t support TOCs at all.

The best thing to do is to check whether your platform supports anchors. If it doesn’t, a visual (non-clickable) TOC is still worth doing for scannability. You can create your article in Word, for example. Use the H2 and H3 headings to create a TOC in Word and copy/paste the entire content into your post or page. The TOC will show your primary contents; it just won’t have the jump functionality.

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How To Insert a TOC Into an Existing WordPress Page or Post (Draft or by Editing a Published Article)?

Step 1: Go to your WordPress dashboard → click “Posts” → find your draft and click to open it.

Step 2: Look at your post and make sure your sections are formatted as Heading blocks — not just bold text or regular paragraphs. The plugin reads actual H2/H3 headings only. If your sections aren’t using Heading blocks, the TOC will be empty.

To check: click on a section title. Look at the block type in the toolbar at the top of that block. It should say H2 or H3. If it says “Paragraph,” you need to change it.

To change it: click the Paragraph icon in the block toolbar → select “Heading” from the dropdown.

Step 3: Scroll down on the right-hand sidebar. You should see a panel called “Table of Contents” — this is added by the plugin.

Step 4: If you see a toggle that says “Insert Table of Contents,” make sure it is turned ON for this post.

Step 5: You may also see a checkbox that says something like “Skip this post.” Make sure that is NOT checked.

Step 6: Save or update the post, then click “Preview.”

Step 7: The TOC should appear automatically near the top of your post, just above your first heading, listing all your H2 and H3 headings as clickable links.

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If the TOC isn’t showing up:

• Double-check that your section titles are genuine Heading blocks (Step 2 above is the most common culprit)
• Go back to Settings → Table of Contents and confirm “Posts” is checked under both “Enable Support” and “Auto Insert.”
• Make sure you have enough headings. If you set the threshold to “4 or more headings” during setup, a post with only 2 headings won’t trigger it

If you want to control exactly WHERE the TOC appears (rather than letting it auto-place), you can add a shortcode block anywhere in your post and paste or type the command inside it. That forces the TOC to appear at that exact spot. This is useful if you want it after your opening hook paragraph rather than at the very top.

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Want help troubleshooting if it’s not appearing as expected?

I found the TOC link in the upper, middle menu, not in a side menu, and it worked. However, I made a spelling error when I set up the title for the website pages and posts, and then I couldn’t see a way to edit it. Here’s how to edit the settings within that TOC plugin.

Easy fix. Here’s how to get back into the plugin settings.

Step 1: Go to your WordPress Dashboard on the left sidebar.

Step 2: Look for “Settings” and click it to expand the menu.

Step 3: You should see “Table of Contents” listed there. Click it.

Step 4: That opens the full settings page for the plugin.

Step 5: Look for the field that controls the title. It is usually labeled “Title” near the top of the settings page, and it likely shows something like “Contents” or “Table of Contents.” The wording will be whatever you typed when you first set it up. I used “Topics In This Article.”

Step 6: Click into that field and correct your spelling.

Step 7: Scroll down and click “Save Changes.”

Step 8: Last, preview any post that has the TOC, and your corrected title should now appear.

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When Creating a Clickable Table of Contents, Be Sure to Note THIS:

That title setting in the plugin is a global setting. What does that mean? It means it changes the TOC title on every post across your whole site at once. So fixing it in one place fixes it everywhere, which is exactly what you want.

If you don’t see “Table of Contents” under Settings:

Try looking under Settings → Reading or check the very bottom of your left sidebar — some plugins place their settings link there instead. You can also go to Plugins → Installed Plugins, find Easy Table of Contents, and click the “Settings” link directly under its name. That takes you to the same place.

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The truth is that I sometimes simply share information in a blog for no reason other than I needed to know it for my own work, so I taught myself, and thought others might also need or want to know how to do it. That’s the case here, as I am a content creator, not an IT expert! I hope it helps you.

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