Show Related Blog Posts with the Related Posts WordPress Plugin

As I’ve mentioned before, there are only a few select WordPress plugins that should be used by most WordPress blogs. Unless you are running a news site of some sort where your archived posts don’t hold any real value to search engine traffic, you should be using the Related Posts WordPress plugin to try to promote some of your older content.

The first thing you’ll notice after downloading this plugin, is that it is not overly easy to setup up.   In addition to the normal process of uploading it and activating it, you will more than likely need to make an update to one of your databases in order to function.  Here is what the author asks you to do:

ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ADD FULLTEXT `post_related` (
    `post_name` ,

    `post_content`

)

No idea how to create/alter a table?  No problem.  Here are the steps you’ll need to take to make the adjustment:

1) Backup your databases in case you have a problem.
2) Access your blog’s CPanel.
3) Click MySQL Databases.
4) Scroll down and click PHPMyAdmin.
5) If applicable, select the appropriate database in the menu on the right.
6) Scroll through your databases until you locate wp_posts.
7) In the Structure tab at the bottom, you should see some stuff that looks like this, but without the post_related field:

We need to create the post_related field pictured above.
Where is says Create an index on 1 columns, click the Go button. You should now see this:

9) Under index name, type post_related.
10) In the Index type drop-down box, select FULLTEXT.
11) Click Go where it says Add to index 1 column(s).
12) In the first field, select post_date [postdate].
13) In the second field, select post_content [longtext].
14) Click Save.

Now you should see the post_related field pictured above!

Now you just need to tell the plugin where to display your related posts:

<?php if(function_exists('related_posts')) { related_posts(); } ?>

Now that its set up, you can then determine the number of posts you’d like to display from a Options panel under Plugins, and how you’d like to display them.

So, what exactly does this plugin do?  Well, the name of the plugin pretty much sums it up.  Using the keywords in your post titles, this plugin attempts to figure out the most relevant related posts to the post you just wrote, then them wherever you tell the plugin to display the related posts.  This is all done automatically, so you’ve got your plugin setup, there will not be any additional maintenance.

Any questions or thoughts?  Sound off in the comments below!