Contextual Related Posts

Description

Contextual Related Posts is a powerful WordPress plugin that helps you increase your site’s engagement by displaying a list of related posts that are relevant and interesting to your readers.

Contextual Related Posts uses a smart algorithm that analyzes the title and/or content of your posts to find the most related ones. This way, you can show your visitors more of your awesome content and keep them on your site longer.

Contextual Related Posts also comes with many features and options that let you customize the look and feel of the related posts list. You can choose between different styles, layouts, thumbnails, excerpts, and more. You can also use widgets, shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, or REST API to display the related posts anywhere on your site or in your feed.

With Contextual Related Posts, you can easily boost your site’s traffic, reduce bounce rates, and refresh old entries. It’s fast, flexible, and easy to use. Try it today and see the difference for yourself!

Key features

• Automatic: Just activate the plugin and Contextual Related Posts will automatically display related posts on your site and feed after the content. No need to edit any template files.
• Manual install: If you want more control over the placement of the related posts, you can use the FAQ to learn about the functions available for manual install.
• Gutenberg / Block Editor support: You can easily add a block called “Related Posts [CRP]” to any post or page, with its own set of options and settings.
• Widgets: Add related posts to any widgetized area of your theme, such as the sidebar or footer. You can configure the widget options to suit your needs.
• Shortcode: Use [crp] to display the related posts anywhere within the post content.
• REST API: Fetch related posts for any post ID using contextual-related-posts/v1/posts/<id>/. You can also use query parameters to filter or sort the results.
• The algorithm: Find related posts based on the title and/or content of the current post. You can also find posts by tags, categories and selected custom fields.
• Caching: Related posts output is automatically cached as visitors browse through your site, reducing the load on your server and improving performance.
• Exclusions: Exclude posts from certain categories or tags from being displayed in the related posts list. Or you can exclude specific posts or pages by ID using a meta box in the edit screen.
• Custom post types: The related posts list supports posts, pages, attachments, or any other custom post type that you have on your site.
• Thumbnail support: Display thumbnails or not!
• Styles: The output of the related posts list is wrapped in CSS classes that allow you to easily style it using custom CSS code. You can enter your custom CSS code from within the WordPress admin area or use one of the default styles included with the plugin.
• Customisable output: Display post excerpts in the related posts list. You can set the length of the excerpt in words and also strip HTML tags if needed. Customise the HTML tags and attributes used for displaying the output of the related posts list. For example, you can use an ordered or unordered list, a div container, a span element, etc.
• Extendable code: Contextual Related Posts has many filters and actions that allow developers to easily add features, modify outputs, or integrate with other plugins.

Features in Contextual Related Posts Pro

CRP Pro enhances your experience with an advanced query block, offering more precise customisation options, additional shortcode functionalities, and enhanced meta box settings.

• Advanced Algorith: Set the relative weight of the post title, post content and post excerpt. This feature overrides the default equal weight algorithm of the free version and provides a greater degree of fine-tuning.
• Query Loop Block: An advanced block that allows you to display the related posts based on specified parameters. You can use the pre-built block patterns or create your own block patterns for use within posts or the site editor.
• Extra shortcode parameters: Additional parameters for the shortcode that allow you to customise the output of the related posts list.
• Additional Metabox settings: Additional settings in the post edit screen that allow you to customise the related posts output for each post.

mySQL FULLTEXT indices

On activation, the plugin creates three mySQL FULLTEXT indices (or indexes) that are then used to find the related posts in the *_posts. These are for post_content, post_title and (post_title,post_content). The Pro version also has an index for post_excerpt.

If you’re running a multisite installation, then this is created for each of the blogs on activation. All these indices occupy space in your mySQL database but are essential for the plugin to run.

You have two sets of options in the settings page which allows you to remove these indices when you deactivate or delete the plugin. The latter is true by default.

If you do not wish to use these indices, you can disable contextual matching in the settings page. You will need to turn on related posts by category, tags and/or custom taxonomies.

GDPR

Contextual Related Posts is GDPR compliant as it doesn’t collect any personal data about your visitors when installed out of the box. All posts are processed on your site and not sent to any external service.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ENSURING THAT ALL GDPR REQUIREMENTS ARE MET ON YOUR WEBSITE.

Donations

I spend a significant amount of my free time maintaining, updating and more importantly supporting this plugin. Those who have sought support in the support forums know that I have done my best to answer your question and solve your problem.
If you have been using this plugin and find this useful, do consider making a donation. This helps me pay for my hosting and domains.

Contribute

Contextual Related Posts is also available on Github.
So, if you’ve got some cool feature that you’d like to implement into the plugin or a bug you’ve been able to fix, consider forking the project and sending me a pull request.

Bug reports are welcomed on GitHub. Please note GitHub is not a support forum and issues that aren’t properly qualified as bugs will be closed.

Translations

Contextual Related Posts is available for translation directly on www.ads-software.com. Check out the official Translator Handbook to contribute.

Other Plugins by WebberZone

Contextual Related Posts is one of the many plugins developed by WebberZone. Check out our other plugins:

• Top 10 – Track daily and total visits on your blog posts and display the popular and trending posts
• WebberZone Snippetz – The ultimate snippet manager for WordPress to create and manage custom HTML, CSS or JS code snippets
• Knowledge Base – Create a knowledge base or FAQ section on your WordPress site
• Better Search – Enhance the default WordPress search with contextual results sorted by relevance
• Auto-Close – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and manage revisions
• Popular Authors – Display popular authors in your WordPress widget
• Followed Posts – Show a list of related posts based on what your users have read

Screenshots

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

• Contextual Related Posts Display the Related Posts

Installation

WordPress install (The easy way)

1. Navigate to Plugins within your WordPress Admin Area

2. Click “Add new” and in the search box enter “Contextual Related Posts”

3. Find the plugin in the list (usually the first result) and click “Install Now”

Manual install

1. Download the plugin

2. Extract the contents of contextual-related-posts.zip to wp-content/plugins/ folder. You should get a folder called contextual-related-posts.

3. Activate the Plugin in WP-Admin under the Plugins screen

FAQ

Check out the FAQ on the plugin page or the Knowledge Base.

If your question isn’t listed there, please create a new post at the www.ads-software.com support forum. It is the fastest way to get support as I monitor the forums regularly.

Support for products sold and distributed by WebberZone is only available for those who have an active, paid extension license. You can access our support form here.

How can I customise the output?

Contextual Related Posts is highly customizable. There are several configurable options in the Settings page and you can use CSS to customize the outputs. Learn more by reading this article.

Shortcodes

You can insert the related posts anywhere in your post using the [crp] shortcode. View this article in the knowledge base for more details.

How can I report security bugs?

You can report security bugs through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team help validate, triage and handle any security vulnerabilities. Report a security vulnerability.

How does the plugin select thumbnails?

If you enable thumbnails, the plugin will try to find the correct thumbnail in this order:

1. Post meta field: This is the meta field value you can use when editing your post. The default is post-image. Change it in the Settings page

2. Post Thumbnail image: The image that you can set under Featured Image

3. First image in the post: The plugin will try to fetch the first image in the post. Toggle this in the Settings page

4. First child image attached to the post

5. Site Icon: this is typically set using Customizer

6. Default Thumbnail: If enabled, it will use the default thumbnail that you specify in the Settings page

Reviews

Fantastic Support

idrawfashion September 3, 2024 1 reply

As a non-tech-savvy person, I was unable to set up the plugin as I needed, so I quickly uninstalled it. Minutes later, Ajay reached out to me with a warm, personal email offering assistance to get the plugin working for me. With just a couple of custom code lines, the related posts on my blog now look exactly as I imagined. I couldn’t be happier with the professional and warm support from the plugin author. Thank you, and keep creating amazing products!

Superb

lindyncl August 9, 2024 1 reply

I was using a different plug in and it stopped working/indexing my blog posts. I raised a support ticket but after five days no reply so I started looking around for a replacement. I tried two other plug ins before this one and once I figured out how to use some css to centralise it it looks exactly the same as the old plugin did. When I looked at my Google Analytics my page views have shot up, basically because this plug in doesn’t just show “hey here are more posts on my blog…” it shows contextualised related posts so more of what that visitor was looking at in the first place. My page views have shot up. I’m glad the previous plug in stopped working or I would never have found this one.

best related posts plugin

sinanisler July 29, 2024

best related posts plugin O_O

Excellent Support with recent upgrade issue

quidprocrow July 28, 2024

I noticed that, with the most recent upgrade, my manual related posts were not working correctly. I contacted support on the WP site and received a quick response from Ajay. After a few back and forth questions and answers, he realized that there was a bug and fixed it the next day. On a weekend no less! A+++

Great plugin

Ronald Huereca June 12, 2024 2 replies

Great plugin. Yours is the best related posts plugin I’ve found, and I’ve tried a lot. If I could request one feature, perhaps in the pro version, the ability to show only related posts within the same post type.

Super Support

DAMIANOS June 10, 2024 1 reply

The latest version of the plugin is super fast with no memory consumption. Highly recommended.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

3.5.4

Release post: https://webberzone.com/announcements/contextual-related-posts-v3-5-0/

• Fixes:
  • include_post_ids and manual_related were not being passed correctly to the query

3.5.3

• Modifications:

  • Updated Freemius SDK to 2.7.3
  • Updated Contextual Related Posts block apiVersion to 3
  • Increase background opacity for the Rounded Thumbs style’s post title for better readability

• Fixes:

  • Allow manual_related attribute in shortcode
  • Correctly handle manual_related and include_post_ids arguments when set to 0. Ensure manual_related is set to an empty array when 0 is passed.
  • Correctly check if relation attribute is set for meta_query and tax_query
  • Fixed links to settings and tools page in the admin area
  • Pass post_status when using get_posts()
  • Remove the_posts filter in CRP_Query
  • [Pro] Fixed bug in the Query Loop where custom post types didn’t appear in the dropdown

3.5.2

• Modifications:

  • [Pro] If “Only from” same category/tag/taxonomy is enabled, the plugin will sort results by the number of matched taxonomies first, therby optimising the related posts further. The free version will continue to sort by date
  • [Pro] If any of the weights are 0, then the algorithm will not consider that field for matching

• Bug fix:

  • Custom styles did not get enqueued on the front end
  • Fixed PHP error on Network admin page
  • Fixed bug where post types and taxonomies settings retained the previous values if no option was selected

3.5.1

• Bug fix:
  • Fixed memory issue when using the crp shortcode

3.5.0

Complete code rewrite using OOP, namespacing and autoloading. This will make it easier to maintain and extend the plugin in the future.

• Features:

  • Enter a negative number in the “Insert after paragraph number” setting to insert the related posts from the bottom of the post
  • [Pro] New Related Posts Query Block that allows you to query related posts using a block in the block or site editor
  • [Pro] New feature to set the weight of the title, content and excerpt in the related posts algorithm
  • [Pro] New parameter display_only_on_tax_ids to display related posts only on specific taxonomy terms
  • [Pro] New option added to the Edit Post meta box mapped to include_cat_ids to include related posts from specific categories only
  • [Pro] New Clear cache button in the settings page to clear the cache

• Enhancements:

  • The plugin supports WP_Query directly if crp_query is set in the query arguments
  • Optimized media handler to reduce the number of queries
  • Cache posts only setting is changed to be true by default
  • Cache HTML output will now cache the HTML output of the related posts list superseding the Cache posts only setting

• Bug fix:

  • trim_char function returned a blank string instead of the original string if length was 0
  • Insert after paragraph used to insert after an extra paragraph than what was specified

Earlier versions

For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to the separate changelog.txt file or the releases page on Github.