Contextual Related Posts v2.2.0

ByAjay

This is the first plugin release post on this blog and official announcement that Contextual Related Posts is now officially under the banner of WebberZone. I’m pleased to announce that v2.2.0 of Contextual Related Posts is now available via the WordPress.org plugin repository.

v2.2.0 brings a multitude of new features, some plugin enhancements and a few bug fixes. Several functions have been deprecated and replaced by new functions. If you’re currently using these functions, your WordPress blog will log a deprecated notice.

If you’re looking for support, please create a new post in the Contextual Related Posts support forum. Bug reports can also be filed in the Github repository.

Selectively turn off the related posts

You could always enter the post IDs to exclude display under the Exclusion Settings that can be found under Output options. In v2.2.0, you can also tick the option in the metabox called: Disable Related Posts display and the related posts will no longer be automatically inserted on this post/page/custom post type. This currently doesn’t apply for the widget and manual display using echo_crp.

CRP Metabox

Manual Related Posts

This has been a feature request from many users for a long period of time and now you can set manual posts of your choice by entering a set of comma separated list of post/page/custom post type IDs in the Manual Related posts field in the meta box. These related posts will be displayed before the ones automatically generated by the plugin.

You can find the ID by editting your post as in the screenshot below or install a plugin that would let you do this more easily.

Find the post ID in WordPress
Find the post ID in WordPress

Updated styles

The default styles in the plugin have evolved over the past several plugin versions. One of the limitations was the inflexibility to modify the width and height of the thumbnail which was fixed at 150px only. From this version, you can modify the width and height of the thumbnail or choose any of the other image sizes. Although not perfect, the plugin will try to use the same styles for the thumbnail. Recommended settings remain at 150px.

You can also choose to display No styles or a Text only style. Setting it to Rounded Thumbnails or Text only will force some options and keep them unchanged.

CRP Styles

Post type in widget

The widget now lets you also select the post type of the related posts. Earlier you could only set this in the main settings page, but now you can set it in the related posts widget as well. This will override the settings in the main settings / global settings page.

CRP Widget

Detailed changelog

  • Features:
    • Manual posts can now be set in the meta box in the Edit Post screens which will be displayed before the related posts fetched by the plugin
    • Choose between No style, Rounded thumbnails (previously called default style) and Text only style options under the Styles box in the plugin settings page
    • Option to turn off the Contextual Related metabox on Edit Posts screens or limit it to Admins only. Also applies to Pages and Custom Post Types
    • Filter crp_link_attributes that allows a user to add or remove attributes for the a tag
    • Notice is displayed at the top of the Settings page if there are any missing of the FULLTEXT indices missing
    • Option in the Contextual Related Posts meta box to disable the related posts on the selected post
    • Select post type in the Related Posts Widget
  • Enhancements:
    • Optimised number of queries for exclude categories option. Those not using this option will see the greatest savings
    • Select a pre-built thumbnail size will automatically update the width, height and crop settings. The default style will no longer enforce the 150×150 thumbnail size.
    • strict_limit argument in get_crp_posts_id is now TRUE by default
    • get_crp takes an additional argument: heading (default is TRUE) that controls the display of the main heading (Related Posts)
    • Output of echo_crp will be cached in a separate meta key
  • Bugfixes:
    • First child now gets the correct thumbnail size
  • Deprecated:
    • ald_crp() – Use get_crp() instead
    • ald_crp_content() – Use crp_content_filter() instead
    • ald_crp_rss() – Use crp_rss_filter() instead
    • echo_ald_crp() – Use echo_crp() instead

Download Contextual Related Posts

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