I pushed through Contextual Related Posts v2.4.0 to the WordPress.org repository today (Update: 2.4.1 has been released to fix a few bugs). This version adds some much asked features including randomising the related posts and also limiting them to the same post type. You can find both options under “List Tuning” in your settings page.
Randomising related posts has been a much requested feature by many users. The challenge with randomising the related posts with mySQL is primarily performance along with many unrelated posts getting priority. In this version, the related posts are first fetched based on the limit that you specify e.g. 6 posts based on the screenshot below. These are then shuffled to randomise them on display. This feature currently doesn’t work with the cache enabled. In the next version of Contextual Related Posts, I’ll be modifying the way the cache works to make it a bit more flexible.
The second key feature is the option to limit posts to the same post type. This option will override the “Post types to include in the results” option.
There are few other minor changes in the plugin including the way titles are not limited to ensure that it is more compatible with utf8 character sets that non English languages use.
As always, you should be able to see an update of the plugin within your admin area itself. If you’ve got any issues or require support, please create a new post in the support forums.
Changes in Contextual Related Posts v2.4.1
- Bug fixes:
- Reverted the “Automatically add related posts to” setting introduced in 2.4.0
- Metaboxes will now save when editting attachments
Changes in Contextual Related Posts v2.4.0
- Features:
- New option to randomise the related posts
- New option to limit related posts to the same post type
- “Automatically add related posts to” option applies to widgets
- Enhancements:
post_types
argument now takes a comma-separated list of post types. Default format when resaving options is also comma-separated
- Bug fixes:
- Trimming titles should now work with multibyte / non-English characters
- Deprecated:
crp_max_formatted_content
has been deprecated. Usecrp_trim_char
instead