Contextual Related Posts v4.0 – A Leap Forward in Efficiency and Functionality
After months of work, testing, and several late-night coding sprints, I am proud to launch Contextual Related Posts v4.0 officially!
This update is more than just a version bump. It lays the foundations for a more intelligent, faster, and more flexible way to display related content on your WordPress site—especially if you’re using Contextual Related Posts Pro.
Whether you’re a blogger, publisher, or developer managing client sites, CRP 4.0 brings features designed to make your content work harder.
Why This Update Matters
CRP has always focused on relevance — showing visitors content they’re most likely to click on. However, as sites scale and database sizes grow, performance and flexibility become even more critical.
This release tackles:
- Efficiency: With new custom tables (Pro), CRP queries are more efficient while extending functionality.
- Precision: Taxonomy weights and cornerstone content help fine-tune what gets shown.
- Control: More settings. Better caching. Smarter tracking.
I’ve also added several minor improvements based directly on user feedback. Let’s dive in.
New in the Free Version
Drag-and-drop Manual Post Ordering
When manually selecting related posts in the metabox, you can drag and drop them to reorder them. No more fiddling with post IDs — just point, drag, and drop into place: a minor tweak, but a massive usability boost if you prefer complete control over ordering your manual related posts.
Improved WP_Query parameter handling
If you’re a developer using CRP_Query, the shortcode or the block, you can now easily pass WP_Query’s parameters:
- get_wp_query_arguments() is used by the shortcode, which lets you pass a vast array of WP_Query parameters.
- parse_wp_query_arguments() smartly converts a comma-separated list of IDs for typical WP_Query parameters into an array, giving you fantastic flexibility in the shortcode and the blocks.
Developer-focused cleanup
I’ve renamed the core class that handled the related posts query from CRP() to CRP_Core_Query() to reflect its role better.
This change won’t affect most users, but if you’re extending CRP or using custom integrations, you’ll want to adjust your hooks accordingly.
You can continue to use CRP_Query() as you did before.
Pro Features to Supercharge Your Site
Upgrading to CRP Pro unlocks powerful tools built for large sites, performance-focused setups, and marketers.
Efficient Content Storage and Indexing (ECSI) with Custom Tables
One of the most significant improvements in v4.0 is the implementation of custom database tables for Pro users. CRP Pro now supports (and recommends) custom database tables to store post content (title, excerpt, and body) for matching. Why does this matter?
- WordPress core tables stay lean.
- Content is pre-processed and stored.
- Taxonomy scores are pre-computed, allowing more efficient queries.
This feature is optional, but you’ll notice the difference if you have a large site or use the taxonomy weighting system. Follow this guide to learn how to enable and customise it.
I plan to introduce multisite-related posts, bidirectional linking and better tracking. ESCI lays the groundwork for these new features and will become the only method to support the newer features in Contextual Related Posts.
Set Maximum Execution Time for MySQL Queries
You can now set the maximum execution time for CRP queries directly on the Settings page. This feature adds a MAX_EXECUTION_TIME hint to MySQL queries, helping prevent long-running queries from affecting your site’s performance.
Flexible Caching Options
You can now control how long CRP caches related post results — from 1 hour to 1 year. This is a big win for performance, particularly for sites where content doesn’t change often. Shorter cache windows are great for news/blog sites; longer ones benefit from evergreen content.
Built-in UTM Tracking for Related Links
Want to see how related posts perform in Google Analytics or other analytics platforms? CRP Pro can now add UTM parameters to every related post URL. Here’s what gets added:
- utm_source=contextual-related-posts
- utm_medium=related-posts
- utm_campaign=crp-plugin
- utm_content={source-post-id}-to-{target-post-id}
With this, you’ll know which links drive clicks and from where.
👉 Learn more in Google Analytics’ UTM tracking setup guideOpens in a new window.
Cornerstone Post Support
Do you have key articles or evergreen content that deserves more visibility?
You can now set a list of post IDs as “cornerstone”, and CRP will randomly sprinkle them into the related posts list. This ensures they get seen more often — even if they aren’t the closest match — helping you guide users to your most important pages.
Taxonomy Weight System – Precision meets power!
The new taxonomy weight system allows you to prioritise specific taxonomies (like categories or tags) when calculating relatedness. For example, maybe you want category matches to count more than tags or vice versa.
You can assign weights to each category, tag and custom taxonomy (default setting) in the Pro settings. You can also assign primary categories to get an extra boost. The plugin smartly attempts to detect the primary category from several popular SEO plugins. This gives you more relevant results that align with your site structure.
What’s Next?
This release lays the foundation for a more modular and performant CRP experience — especially for Pro users. But I’m not stopping here.
If you have feedback, a feature request, or want to geek out about relevance algorithms, contact me via the support forums or X (Twitter)Opens in a new window.
Final Thoughts
Contextual Related Posts v4.0 is the most significant update in a long time — and much of it came directly from your feedback.
Thanks for your continued support, bug reports, and feature ideas. CRP is still proudly built and maintained by me — a solo dev — and your input shapes everything I create.
If you haven’t tried the Pro version yet, now’s the perfect time to upgrade and unlock everything this new release offers.
Here’s to more intelligent, faster content recommendations!