Over the Christmas break, I spent quite a bit of time rationalising my WordPress plugins including closing several plugins which I decided I won’t be updating, especially those with very lower viewers. I’m hoping to be a bit more regular in updating my WordPress plugins this year and also fleshing out a much pending documentation for all of them. I’ve managed to be fairly active on the updates and I updated four plugins since the start of the year. All these have had their respective release posts on the WebberZone blog. If you’re here for just my plugin updates, I recommend subscribing to the newsletter there. Better Search I released…
Contextual Related Posts v2.5.0
I’ve just released Contextual Related Posts v2.5.0 and existing users can update the plugin as usual from within their WordPress install. This release adds a few minor features as well as a few bug fixes that were reported by users. Disable on AMP pages and mobile devices One feature requested by a lot of users is to disable the related posts display on mobile devices and AMP pages. With the inbuilt cache, the display of the related posts is super fast. However, you do need to write some custom styles in order to make the display work on both mobile and AMP pages particularly because of the screen size. As a…
Contextual Related Posts v2.4.1
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.…
Contextual Related Posts v2.3.0
This was cross posted on the WebberZone blog Following close on the heels of Top 10 v2.4.x, I’ve pushed through an update to my most widely used plugin. Contextual Related Posts v2.3.0 brings several new features and enhancements, tonnes of bug fixes and several tweaks under the hood for cleaner code in line with WordPress Coding Standards. Existing users can upgrade the plugin from within your WordPress dashboard. Remember to verify your settings and clear the cache when you upgrade. Please address all support queries in the WordPress.org support forum and not in the comments. If you spot any bugs you can report them in the forums or the Github…
Contextual Related Posts and Top 10 updates
I pushed updates to Top 10 and Contextual Related Posts last week. The main changes are better support for WPML especially the ability to display the posts in the current post language. This could potentially cause some clashes with other plugins e.g. Polylang, which I am continuing to investigate. Another major change is to the text domain, i.e. what the plugins have used for translations. Following the announcement of the new translation system announced by WordPress.org, I’ve modified the text domains to match the plugin slugsi.e. contextual-related-posts and top-10 respectively. This will eventually result in lower plugin download files and most importantly localised and better maintained languages for Contextual Related Posts in your…
Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0
I’ve released v2.2.0 of my most popular plugin Contextual Related Posts today. It also marks an important moment in its development, as the plugin is almost completely rebranded and now available via WebberZone, a platform that will eventually host all my major WordPress projects. Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0 has several new features, some enhancements to existing features and some bug fixes. Existing users can upgrade the plugin via their Updates screen in the WordPress admin area. Two main features are the ability to turnoff related posts on a post by post basis as well as specify a set of manual related posts which are given a higher priority over the…
CRP Taxonomy Tools v1.1.0
I pushed through a small, but important, update to Contextual Related Posts Taxonomy Tools, which is an addon to Contextual Related Posts. I’ve also developed this as an example for other developers to create addons to Contextual Related Posts. CRP Taxonomy Tools allows you to restrict the related posts generated by Contextual Related Posts to the same category and tag. At least, it used to until now. Support for Custom Taxonomies v1.1.0 now adds support to custom taxonomies as well. This is especially useful to custom post types where the quality of the related post may not be the most ideal set. e.g. if you’re running a movie review blog and you…
Contextual Related Posts v2.1.0
After the major release of Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks working on v2.1.0 which brings together several bug fixes, some optimisation and many new features. If you’re using this plugin and looking for support, please do not post a comment below, but instead create a new thread in the WordPress.org support forum or create a new issue in Github. If you’re just upgraded the plugin, remember to clear the cache and even better, reset the plugin settings. Remember to save any custom CSS code that you might be using. No more Timthumb I blogged about removing timthumb from my…
Contextual Related Posts 2.0
Last week I released a major update to Contextual Related Posts. Given the size of the update, I’ve tagged the latest version as 2.0, heralding a new direction in the further development of this plugin. v2.x brings multi-site support, WordPress thumbnails and a more powerful API. It also has several minor bug fixes and cleaner code. Multi-site support One feature that has been missing from Contextual Related Posts has been multisite support, mainly in terms of a Network Activate feature. With the Network Activate feature enabled, a multi-site admin can choose if he wants to activate Contextual Related Posts across all sites in the network or let users activate the plugin…
Contextual Related Posts v1.9.1
I released v1.9.1 of Contextual Related Posts yesterday. This version adds a new meta box in your Add/Edit Post screen. You’ll also find this in the similar screens for Pages and other Custom Post Types. The meta-box currently provides you with a single field that allows you to specify the URL of the thumbnail that you wish to use in case a Featured Thumbnail isn’t set for the post. In a future version of the plugin, this will be given priority over the Featured Thumbnail. The meta box will use the same meta field as specified in the General Settings. If you’re using the default field name i.e. post-image and you’re using my…
