[Plugin: ELI's Related Posts Footer Links and Widget] Option to disable related links on blog h

Not a bad idea, could you describe why you personally don’t want to see it on you home page (what is your underlying goal)?

I’m open to adding this as a feature to my next release. How would you propose this new rule be written?

Might it be better and have near the same effect to automatically prevent linking to any post that is already being displayed on the page?

Aloha, Eli

I do not want to display related links on my home page posts, mainly to conserve space, and since I only show excerpts on the home page. This could of course be an option, though, for those that want it.

Another possible reason, is SEO-related – having too many internal links from your home page can be a bad thing. (Maybe there can be an option to make the related links “nofollow” too?) That’s in addition to the “duplicate link” problem, because many of the related post links on one’s homepage are going to be the same.

How this rule be written, I don’t know exactly, since I’m not a programmer, but if I look at some other plugins, I may offer some suggestions. For example, the AmazonFeed plugin has a “Display” function with home page and other options in its admin backend (see https://imm.io/gBFb ). Maybe something similar can be offered in your plugin?

I previously used the Related Posts by Tags Widget plugin, that has functionality similar to yours, except no admin settings (although it has the option to display related posts in feeds, as well as dates next to the related post links). I have stopped using it because it’s outdated and I have started seeing database errors on some of my sites. But that plugin doesn’t show related posts on the home page – not sure why/how, but maybe you can take a peek? ??

Finally, I like your plugin, but have one bit of criticism, if you don’t mind. There is a “Plugin Updates” section in the plugin admin settings that “phones home” to display any plugin updates. I’ve had a problem where this “update notice” couldn’t display, apparently due to a network/website issue or because it couldn’t find your server, resulting in the settings page not displaying, but just “polling” endlessly. I therefore feel this function is unnecessary and intrusive, firstly because we are not made aware of it (it’s a bit like spying” on your users), nor have the option to turn it off. And, secondly, the “update” function is not needed, since WordPress already provides that when the plugin is updated in the repository. And, lastly, as I pointed out, when there is a network/connection problem it negatively affects the user’s website. So, I would suggest you seriously consider removing this “feature” all-together. (It may actually be a contravention of the WordPress plugin guidelines – see #7 here, for example) In this vain, why is there a function to email you on line 172? Just saying… I trust you will see this as positive criticisms.

Thanks again for your contribution and hard work! ??

wow, this is all really great feedback. Perhaps the easiest way to address your original concern is to not show related post links under an excerpt. This I think would cover what you want on your home page plus any other page that only shows excerpts, like the tag and category pages on some themes.

As to your positive criticisms, I definitely need to look into that. My intention there is to display the Upgrade Notice to the admin user. This informs the user as to the nature of the upgrade that is available and the urgency of upgrading. If I discover a major bug I would like to inform the use that there is a fix available. This is more that WordPress already provides with their own “phones home” for plugin updates (It also seems hypocritical to me that they would not want me doing it but they are). I will read through that plugin guidelines page again and make the necessary changes to my plugin.

line 172: this line emails me if there is a serious error caused by my plugin. It has been invaluable in tracking down bugs in my code that only occur on other servers. Most times the problems in my code don’t show up on my server before a release, but on another server with an unexpected environment (env vars, path issues, permissions, os architecture) there are errors I could not have foreseen. You can rem this line out if you want and it won’t break anything.

Thank you for feedback. Please let me know what you think of my “excerpt filter” solution to your original concern. I should be able to work it into my next release (any day now).

I think the “excerpt filter” solution could work, let’s give it a try. ??

Thanks again for your effort – I look forward to giving the next release a spin.

It appears my Related post links already do not show on except pages. So I’m trying to figure out why they would show on YOUR home page if that page is only showing excepts.

Could you please provide a link to your home page. If you don’t want to post it you can email it to me directly:
wordpress at ieonly dot com

Aloha, Eli

I just released my new version 1.2.02.16 with the option to NOT show Related Post Links on the Home page, like you have originally suggested. If you end up going to excerpts on the your Home page then it shouldn’t matter because the Related Post Links should only show up in the Footer of a whole post.

The debut function is never called in this release, I only used it for debugging during pre-release testing. So, the email line you asked about, now on line 202, is not needed and can be removed or remmed-out by putting a // at the beginning of the line.

I’ve changed the Plugin Updates section on the right sidebar but I am leaving it in as it is very useful to display the details of the changes in newer version. It does not collect any personal information, only the plugin name and version so that I can correctly display what updates are available. If you still don’t want it on you’s then you can remove the whole pluginupdates div on lines 72 through 75 and it will not check.

If you feel that I have addressed all your concerns satisfactorily then please change the status of this topic to “resolved”.

Thanks again for all your suggestions.

Aloha, Eli

today i update to 1.2.02.16 version.
now i have this error Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach()
you can see it at any page of my blog, for example – https://www.russo-bellezze.ru/archives/412

Thanks for letting me know!

I just released version 1.2.02.17 with a fix for the Warning: “Invalid argument supplied for foreach” on line 457.

V1.2.02.17 has all the features we talked about, and works great, thanks Eli!

Thank you Eli!
Another bug i see, if i use “Relate Posts by:Tags” in settings, plugin does not return any results, only “Relate Posts by:Categories” works.
May bee this is because my blog in cyrilic charset=”UTF-8″?

I don’t think its the charset. I can’t be sure, because I cannot read the language of your site (Russian?), but I don’t see any posts using Tags. If you do have 2 or more posts on your site that use one of the same Tags then switch to use “Relate Posts by:Tags” again in settings and look at one of those posts, it should have a link to the other one(s). If not, send me links to both of those posts and I’ll see if I can tell why not.

Thanks, Eli