Creating a Related Posts Plugin for WordPress

WordPress is a great platform for developing plugins. In this article, we will show you how to create a related posts plugin for WordPress.

What is a Related Posts Plugin?

A related posts plugin is a tool that helps you display related posts on your WordPress site. This is a great way to keep your visitors engaged and reduce your bounce rate.

Why Use a Related Posts Plugin?

There are many reasons to use a related posts plugin on your WordPress site. Here are some of the most important ones:

• It helps you increase your pageviews.
• It keeps your visitors engaged on your site.
• It helps reduce your bounce rate.
• It helps you increase your SEO rankings.
• It helps you improve your website’s UX.

How to Create a Related Posts Plugin for WordPress

Creating a related posts plugin for WordPress is not a difficult task. In fact, it is quite easy. All you need to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Install and activate the Related Posts by Taxonomy plugin.
2. Once the plugin is activated, go to Settings » Related Posts page to configure the plugin settings.
3. On the plugin settings page, you will need to select the post types, taxonomies, and terms that you want to use for related posts.
4. You can also select the number of related posts to display, the order of related posts, and more.
5. Once you are done, click on the Save Changes button to save your changes.

Conclusion

That’s it! You have successfully created a related posts plugin for WordPress. We hope this article helped you. If you need any help, feel free to leave a comment below.

A related posts plugin is a great way to engage your readers and keep them on your site longer. By displaying related content, you can increase the chances that a reader will find something else they’re interested in on your site.

There are a number of ways to create a related posts plugin for WordPress. In this article, we’ll cover two methods:

1. Use the WordPress API to create a related posts plugin

2. Use a plugin to create a related posts plugin

Creating a Related Posts Plugin Using the WordPress API

The WordPress API makes it easy to create a related posts plugin. To get started, you’ll need to create a new plugin or add the following code to an existing plugin:

‘related_posts_widget’,
‘description’ => ‘This widget will display related posts on your site.’
);
parent::__construct( ‘related_posts_widget’, ‘Related Posts Widget’, $widget_ops );
}

function widget( $args, $instance ) {
extract( $args );

echo $before_widget;

if ( ! empty( $instance[‘title’] ) ) {
echo $before_title . apply_filters( ‘widget_title’, $instance[‘title’] ) . $after_title;
}

// display the related posts
echo ‘

‘;
$related_posts = get_posts( array(
‘category__in’ => wp_get_post_categories( get_the_ID() ),
‘numberposts’ => 5,
‘post__not_in’ => array( get_the_ID() )
) );
if ( $related_posts ) {
foreach ( $related_posts as $post ) {
setup_postdata( $post );
echo ‘
• ‘ . get_the_title() . ‘

‘;
}
}
wp_reset_postdata();
echo ‘

‘;

echo $after_widget;
}

function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {
$instance = $old_instance;
$instance[‘title’] = strip_tags( $new_instance[‘title’] );
return $instance;
}

function form( $instance ) {
$title = isset( $instance[‘title’] ) ? $instance[‘title’] : ‘Related Posts’;
?>

<label for="get_field_id( ‘title’ ); ?>”>Title:
<input class="widefat" id="get_field_id( ‘title’ ); ?>” name=”get_field_name( ‘title’ ); ?>” type=”text” value=”” />

Creating a Related Posts Plugin Using a Plugin

If you don’t want to code a plugin yourself, you can use a plugin to create a related posts plugin. We recommend using the WordPress Related Posts Plugin.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you’ll need to configure it. Go to Settings » Related Posts to configure the plugin.

The first setting is to choose the source of the related posts. You can choose to display posts from the same category, tag, or author.

The next setting is to choose the number of posts to display. We recommend keeping this number between 3 and 5.

The last setting is to choose how the related posts are displayed. You can choose to display the related posts in a list, grid, or slider.

Once you’ve configured the plugin, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to save your changes.

Your related posts plugin is now ready to use.

Assuming you have a basic understanding of PHP and how to develop WordPress plugins, let’s get started.

The first thing we need to do is create a new file in our plugin directory called related-posts.php. In this file, we’ll start by adding the plugin header, which tells WordPress some basic information about our plugin:

Next, we need to register a function with WordPress that will display our related posts. We’ll do this by hooking into the WordPress action system.

add_action( ‘the_content’, ‘related_posts_display’ );

function related_posts_display( $content ) {
// our related posts code will go here
}

In the code above, we’ve registered a function called related_posts_display() to run when the_content action is fired. This action is fired when WordPress is displaying a post or page on the front-end of the site.

Now let’s write some code to display our related posts.

function related_posts_display( $content ) {
global $post;

// only display related posts on single posts
if ( is_single() ) {

// get the post ID
$post_id = $post->ID;

// get the post categories
$categories = get_the_category( $post_id );

// get the first category
$first_category = $categories[0]->term_id;

// get 5 posts from the first category
$args = array(
‘posts_per_page’ => 5,
‘cat’ => $first_category
);
$related_posts = get_posts( $args );

// display the related posts
if ( $related_posts ) {
$content .= ‘

Related Posts

‘;
$content .= ‘

‘;
foreach ( $related_posts as $post ) {
setup_postdata( $post );
$content .= ‘
• ‘ . get_the_title() . ‘

‘;
}
wp_reset_postdata();
$content .= ‘

‘;
}

}

return $content;
}

In the code above, we first check if we’re on a single post. If we are, we get the post ID and the categories for that post. We then get the first category, and use it to query for 5 related posts.

Finally, we display the related posts in a list.

And that’s it! Save your plugin file and activate the plugin, and you should see your related posts displayed at the bottom of your single posts.