Displaying relevant posts to your blog readers may entice them to click and read another blog post while they are visiting your site. WordPress uses Categories and Tags to allow you to group relevant content together. There are two popular plugins that make use of these to display a series of links to other related content.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
The Yet Another Related Posts Plugin or YARPP for short is one of the most popular related posts plugins for WordPress.
Install the YARPP plugin by searching for “yarpp” on the Install Plugins admin page.
After the plugin is installed and activated it automatically displays links to related posts at the end of your blog post. Related posts are determined by the categories and tags you select when publishing a blog post. For example, here is a blog post before YARPP is installed.
After the plugin is activated you will see a “Related Posts” section automatically appears at the end of the blog post.
The default display generated by YARPP is not entirely appealing so you will want to apply some tweaks to the plugin settings. Click on Related Posts (YARPP) in the Settings section of the left hand sidebar.
The default number of related posts to list is five but on some blogs with not much content only one or two related posts will be displayed. To increase this number you can lower the “match threshold” from its default value of five.
I also prefer to clear the check box so that excerpts are not shown in the related posts list.
And although it might be good karma to help promote the plugin on your site I find it just adds unnecessary clutter to your blog so I always clear this check box as well.
YARPP will also display related posts in your RSS feed by default, however this conflicts with some of the RSS feed enhancement plugins such as RSS Footer. To avoid these conflicts clear the check box for displaying related posts in RSS feeds.
WP Related Posts Plugin
WordPress Related Posts is another plugin that displays a list of related posts based on tags. This plugin will display the list in an RSS feed without conflicting with the RSS enhancement plugins such as RSS Footer.
Install the WordPress Related Posts plugin by searching for “wordpress related posts” on the Install Plugins admin page.
After the plugin is installed it does not begin working until you configure it. Click on WordPress Related Posts in the Settings section of the left hand sidebar.
Configure the plugin with the following settings:
- Set the related posts title to “Related Posts:”
- Choose “Random Posts” when no related posts are found
- Set the no related posts title to “Other Posts:
- Set the limit to 5
- Tick the check box for related posts for RSS
After you have configured the plugin click on the Update Preferences button. You can test the plugin using the excellent “RSS to HTML” tool at PlanetOzh.com. Enter the URL of your WordPress blog followed by /feed and click the Parse button.
The output of your RSS feed is rendered in HTML for you to confirm that the related posts lists are being generated after each post.
Your WordPress blog will now display related posts at the end of each blog post as well as in the RSS feed, and without conflicting with other useful plugins.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I just installed it, thanks! I can see it working in the RSS feeds but nothing is showing up on my actual blog. Any ideas?
Thanks,
-MJ
MJ, which one did you install? I listed two plugins in the blog post.
Sorry, I installed WP Related Posts.
MJ, WP Related Posts (if you are following my instructions) will only display in the RSS feed. To get related posts into your blog as well, use YARPP (the first plugin I mention in the post).
You can use WP Related Posts to put related posts in the blog
, but it required editing your theme codeby ticking the box in the plugin settings.But I suggest combining the two plugins to get related posts appearing in both the blog and the RSS feed.
Hope that is clearer.
Thanks, I got it installed but now it’s showing a decimal number after each related post. Any idea what this is?
Thats the “related” score that YARPP uses. It can help you if you need to tune the plugin. It is only visible to you when you’re logged in as your blog admin, regular visitors don’t see it.
Thank you so much for all your help and the post itself. I love your site and enjoy getting new posts in my email. You seem to explain things that no one else does.
Thanks for your feedback MJ.
Thanks for the tips (I found you through the ProBlogger forum board)!