Anyway, use at your own risk.
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WordPress has the wonderful capability of allowing specific pages to have custom templates. In the initial version of Muse’s Success, we exploited this capability along with custom fields to generate the listing directory and listing detail pages.

Firstly, I would like you to make a copy of your default pages template. This file is usually named page.php, and located in /wp-content/themes/[name of your theme]/ directory of WordPress installation. Name this copy, table_of_contents.php, and open it in your favourite text editor.

Add the following to line 1 of your table_of_contents.php. It needs to be the first thing in your file.

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<?php /* Template Name: Table of Contents
*/ ?>

Find:

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<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;</p>'); ?>

This line may be slightly different, your basically looking for an instance of <?php the_content(‘…’). ?> Don’t worry about what the single parameter, if any.

Immediately after add:

This is the basic code to output post titles in chronological order. You can make slight variations of this, and it in general depends on how you’ve been naming your posts. In my experience, most authors are placing the chapter number and title in their WordPress post titles, so this example is geared towards these authors, but I will show some alternatives at the end of this tutorial.

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<?php
global $post;
$post_save = $post;
$category_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'toc_category_id', true);
$toc = get_posts('numberposts=-1&category='.$category_id.'&order=ASC&orderby=date');
foreach($toc as $post) :
?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
<?php endforeach; $post = $post_save; ?>

Create the Page

Now, we have to create a WordPress page. You can do this by selecting Pages -> Add New in your WordPress Dashboard Menu. It’s up to you what you name your page, and what you write in the content area, but I would recommend the title is that of your book, and your content area contains a short introduction to your story (like what you would have on the blurb of a print book).

Select the Custom Template

Before you publish your page, we have a few special things we need to do to make the table of contents appear. You’ll need to select the Table of Contents template in the Attributes section (lower right) of the Add Page page as depicted.

Set the Custom Field

Next, we have to add a custom field. Custom fields can be added below the page content area. Name your custom field “toc_category_id” and set the value to the ID number of the category containing your posts. You can find the ID out by going to the Edit Categories (Dashboard menu -> Posts -> Categories) page, and clicking Edit under the category containing the posts that comprise your story. On the Edit Category page, take a look at your address bar, and you’ll see the text &cat_ID=. The number after the equals sign is your category ID.

Click Add Custom Field, and then Publish, and you’re done. If all went well, when you view the page you just created, you should see your new table of contents.

Using an ordered list instead

Earlier, I mentioned that there are other variations of the code that are suited to different post naming schemes. The one I showed earlier was a basic one title after another list using linebreaks.

If you are one who names their posts solely the name of your chapter with no number, you might like to use an ordered list to automatically add the chapter number for you.

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<ol>
<?php
global $post;
$post_save = $post;
$category_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'toc_category_id', true);
$toc = get_posts('numberposts=-1&category='.$category_id.'&order=ASC&orderby=date');
foreach($toc as $post) :
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; $post = $post_save; ?>
</ol>

Those knowing CSS (and respecting semantics) but naming their chapters with number and name might also want to use the above code, but use CSS to hide the numbers in visual browsers.

This is a sidebar widget for WordPress that will generate a table of contents from the posts located within a specified category.

It is intended for authors of web fiction but should be useful to anyone using posts to write a book or similar in a serialized format.

The plugin appears to work, but this is an early release. Your feedback (and bug reports/suggestions) is very much appreciated.

Sample Web Fiction Using Ths Widget

• The Inheritance Afflictions by Darkthorn

Installation:

1. Upload the `web-fiction-table-of-contents-widget` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. The widget will now show up under Appearance/Widgets ready for use.

Support:
Muse’s Success Forums

Widget Configuration Options
The widget has several options which you can use to customise its behaviour. The
following is an outline of these options.

Title
By default we name the Table of Contents simply Table of Contents. This isn’t
always desirable however, so you can use this option to change Table of Contents
to anything you wish.

Category Containing Chapters
The plugin expects you to have a category dedicated to only containing the
chapters of your story/novel/etc. You need to tell the widget from which
category to generate the table of contents.

Format of Chapter Title
There are numerous ways authors have of naming their posts. Some use just the
chapter title. Others, use Chapter 33 with no title. Others still will specify
both like 33. Name.

{title} is the post’s title.
{num} is an auto-generated chapter number.

Display TOC in Chapters Only
You can choose to only display the table of contents on posts that are a part
of the category specified under Category Containing Chapters. This is especially
useful for authors with multiple stories on a single WordPress install as they
can choose to only display the table of contents related to the chapter
currently being read.

Use Ordered List
You should feel comfortable with CSS if you tick this option.

You can choose to use an ordered list rather then the default unordered list. If
you choose this option, you will want to set “Format of Chapter Title” to only
{title}, and probably wish to edit your stylesheet since WordPress themes don’t
by default style a sidebar widget that use’s the ol tag.

Donate!
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