EDIT - Now that 4.4 is out, you should use the content_pagination
filter. See birgire's answer below.
You can add formatting to raw post content by applying the content filters directly to $post->post_content
:
echo apply_filters( 'the_content', $post->post_content );
This will bypass pagination by not using the get_the_content
function, which is what the_content
uses internally to retrieve the current page's content for multipage posts.
You can prevent wp_link_pages
from outputting anything by applying a filter to its output before the function is called and using the __return_empty_string
helper function:
add_filter( 'wp_link_pages', '__return_empty_string' );