About two months ago the related posts plugin for WordPress that I was using stopped working. It had functioned before, and was highly recommended by bloggers everywhere, but I was never really happy with the posts it chose to display. I could narrow them down by category or tag, but I couldn’t choose specific posts. Being to busy to bother with it, I used the plugin till it stopped working for me, then disabled it. For a while, I used nothing at all. Then I decided to search for something better…
I found a lot of plugins like YARP that did basically the same thing. Some not even as fancy. Then I found Microkid’s Related Post Plugin. It’s a breath of fresh air!
This plugin adds a window to your edit post page. It has a little search box that you type your queery in, and radio buttons to tell the tool to search Titles, Content, or Both. A list of matching posts shows below, and you simply click on them to select them. If you change your mind, you can click on the little ‘x’ and the post title will be removed. It does all this without re-loading the page, which means its very fast. I love this, because often I have an idea what I’d like to see linked to under a post, and sometimes the posts I want to link to are older. This pulls everything and I pick and choose what to show. I can also pick 3, or 5, or 7 for all I care, cause it’s not limited.
Other cool things about this plugin:
- You can customize the CSS to match your theme.
- The plugin will automatically place the links at the end of your post, but if you don’t like where it puts them you can grab the code and insert it in the theme yourself. Or, make use of the shortcode and put the links in the middle of your post!
- There’s a reciprocal option you can use that tells any post linked to also link back to the current post. This can be turned on or off.
- You can pick posts that are currently in drafts, or scheduled to post at a later date! The link will not show until the post linked to is live.
Get Microkid’s Related Posts Plugin
Plugin/Author Page
Download from WordPress Plugin Directory
Here’s a short video clip to show you just how quick and easy it is to find and add related posts!
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