Contextual Related Posts vs Toolbelt

Contextual Related Posts is a powerful WordPress plugin that displays fast, intelligent related posts to keep users on your site longer. Improve SEO, increase pageviews, and lower bounce rates — no setup needed. Key features Activate and Forget: Activate the plugin. Contextual Related Posts automatically displays related posts on your site and in your feed after the content. There is no need to edit any template files. Custom Control with Manual Install: Want placement control? You have multiple options available: Gutenberg / Block Editor support: You can easily add a “Related Posts [CRP]” block to any post or page with its options and settings. Widgets: Add related posts to any widgetized theme area, such as the sidebar or footer. You can configure the widget options to suit your needs. Shortcode: Use [crp] to display the related posts anywhere within the post content. REST API: Fetch related posts for any post ID using contextual-related-posts/v1/posts/ /. You can also use query parameters to filter or sort the results. The algorithm: Find related posts based on the current post’s title and/or content. You can also find posts by tags, categories and selected custom fields. Caching: Related posts output is automatically cached as visitors browse through your site, reducing the load on your server and improving performance. View Demo Contextual Related Posts uses an intelligent algorithm that analyzes your post’s title and/or content to find the most related ones. This way, you can show your visitors more awesome content and keep them on your site longer. With Contextual Related Posts, you can quickly boost your site’s traffic, reduce bounce rates, and refresh old entries. It’s fast, flexible, and easy to use. Try it today and see the difference for yourself! Additional features include: Exclusions: Exclude posts from specific categories or tags from being displayed in the related posts list. Custom post types: The related posts list supports posts, pages, attachments, or any other custom post type on your site. Thumbnail support: Display thumbnails or not! Styles: The output of the related posts list is wrapped in CSS classes that allow you to style it easily using custom CSS code. Customizable output: Display post excerpts in the related posts list. Customize the HTML tags and attributes used to display the output. Extendable code: Many filters and actions allow developers to easily add features, modify outputs, or integrate with other plugins. MySQL FULLTEXT indices On activation, the plugin creates three MySQL FULLTEXT indices (or indexes), which are leveraged to find the related posts. Learn more about how the algorithm works. If you’re running a multisite installation, an index is created for each blog upon activation. These indices occupy space in your MySQL database but are essential for running the plugin. Two options on the settings page allow you to remove these indices when deactivating or deleting the plugin. The latter is true by default. 💼 Features Exclusive to CRP Pro CRP Pro supercharges your related posts with advanced customization, better performance, and powerful content strategy tools. 🚀 Performance Enhancements Efficient Content Storage and Indexing: Speed up your site with optimized custom tables and efficient database indices for lightning-fast queries. Cache Setting: Fine-tune your performance with configurable cache times from 1 hour to 1 year. Server Load Threshold: Prevent CRP from running queries when the database is under heavy load. Bot Protection: Skip CRP processing for known bots and crawlers using an extensible signature list, saving server resources. 🎯 Smarter Content Matching Advanced Algorithm: Control exactly how relevant content is found by adjusting weights for title, content, and excerpt. Taxonomy Weight System: Refine your matches with precise taxonomy weighting for perfect content relationships. 🛒 WooCommerce Integration Related Products for WooCommerce: Seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce to show related products. Product Matching & Filtering: Index SKUs and attributes, filter by stock status, and use category-based recommendations with native WooCommerce styling. Display Customization: Toggle prices, ratings, and choose to replace or complement WooCommerce’s related products. 📖 WooCommerce Related Products Documentation WP-CLI Support Contextual Related Posts Pro includes comprehensive WP-CLI commands for advanced management and automation. Perfect for developers, agencies, and site administrators who need powerful command-line tools. Key WP-CLI Features: Database Management: Migrate post meta, check index status, and manage database operations Cache Control: Clear, warm, enable/disable cache with multisite support Custom Table Operations: Sync content and manage FULLTEXT indexes for optimal performance Content Processing: Reprocess posts and manage related content in bulk Multisite Ready: All commands support --network flag for multisite installations 📖 Complete CLI Documentation 🎨 Advanced Design & Display Options Block Editor Integration: Create beautiful layouts with the Query Loop Block and ready-to-use block patterns including Grid, Image with Title, and more. Extra Shortcode Parameters: Unlock additional customization options for complete control over your related posts display. 📊 Analytics & Content Strategy Tools Tracking Parameters: Measure content performance with automatic UTM tracking for all related post clicks. Cornerstone Posts: Guide visitors to your most important content by featuring key articles in your related posts lists. Additional Metabox Settings: Control related content at the individual post level for perfect content relationships. GDPR Contextual Related Posts doesn’t collect personal data or send information to external services — making it GDPR-friendly by default. ⚠️ You’re responsible for ensuring your site’s overall GDPR compliance. Donations Love Contextual Related Posts? Help keep it alive! You can donate or upgrade to CRP Pro — both help support development and support. Contribute Contextual Related Posts is also available on Github. So, if you’ve got some cool feature you’d like to implement into the plugin or a bug you’ve been able to fix, consider forking the project and sending me a pull request. Bug reports are welcomed on Github. Please note Github is not a support forum, and issues that aren’t suitably qualified as bugs will be closed. Translations Contextual Related Posts is available for translation directly on WordPress.org. Check out the official Translator Handbook to contribute. Other Plugins by WebberZone Contextual Related Posts is one of the many plugins developed by WebberZone. Check out our other plugins: Top 10 – Track daily and total visits to your blog posts and display the popular and trending posts WebberZone Snippetz – The ultimate snippet manager for WordPress to create and manage custom HTML, CSS or JS code snippets Knowledge Base – Create a knowledge base or FAQ section on your WordPress site Better Search – Enhance the default WordPress search with contextual results sorted by relevance Auto-Close – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and manage revisions Popular Authors – Display popular authors in your WordPress widget Followed Posts – Show a list of related posts based on what your users have read WebberZone Link Warnings – Add accessible warnings for external links and target=”_blank” links

A collection of simple addons that provide every day functionality with privacy and speed. There’s very few options, and no unnecessary filler. It does exactly what it needs to do and nothing else. Toolbelt takes a privacy first approach to adding features. Everything happens on your server. No data is sent to third party servers without your explicit consent. No data is loaded from third parties (for example social sharing scripts). Taking inspiration from Jetpack I want to rebuild the features I use the most and make them as simple and fast as possible. Toolbelt has been featured on The WordPress Tavern in an interview with me. You can read more about the creation of the plugin and my desire for a more private internet. Gutenberg Blocks Some of the Toolbelt modules include blocks to make working with the generated content easier. The available blocks are: Contact Form – The simplest way to have people get in touch. Works with the spam module. Post Categories – A category content list for magazine and newspaper themes. Simple Slider – A fast, CSS powered slider. No JavaScript and easy to edit. Projects Grid – to list a collection of projects. These can be filtered by project category. Testimonials Grid – to list a group of testimonials. Great for showing off! 🙂 Markdown – for those who like a simpler writing experience. Sitemap – Easily list all posts, pages, Categories and Projects. Star Rating – Rate things with a simple visual interface. Breadcrumbs – for full site editing. Related posts – for full site editing. All Features Toolbelt has a lot of features. The complete list is below. Admin Interface Tweaks – Small CSS changes to make the interface nicer to use. Avatars – Algorithmicly generated private avatars that are consistent across websites. Breadcrumbs Contact Form – Gutenberg compatible & private. Supports the spam blocker module. Cookie Banner CSP Header Disable Comment Urls – Removes comments urls from your site. Disable REST API – Disable the REST API from public usage. Fast 404 – Stops WordPress from loading the full 404 page for images and other content. Reduces server usage. Footnotes Get Image – Find a featured image for posts that do not have one assigned. Heading Anchors – Add anchor names to headings so that they can be linked to. Iframe Privacy Shield – Remove iframes and add a clickable screen so that they load when the user wants to see them. Infinite Scroll Jetpack Dev Mode – Disable Jetpacks connection so that only local functions are enabled. Lazy Loading Layout Grid – A nicer columns block. Markdown Monetization – Enable Coil Web Monetization. OEmbed – Add additional OEmbed providers. Optimization – Remove WordPress features that are rarely used. Portfolio – Portfolio custom post type and blocks. Post Category – A post category block. Random Redirection – Randomly redirect to a blog post. Related Posts Remove IP Addresses – Remove IP addresses from comments for user privacy (spam protection still works). Responsive Videos Search Redirect – If there’s a single search result redirect to it instead of displaying the restuls. Sitemap – Sitemap block. Slider – JavaScript free CSS slider block. Social Menu – Replace social links with icons in navigation blocks. Spam Blocker – Privacy focused spam blocker. Static Social Sharing – Link to social sharing pages, and don’t load social network content on your site. Stats – Enable privacy focused analytics providers like Fathom. Testimonials – Testimonials Custom post types and blocks. Tidy Notifications – Move plugin and theme notifications to a sidebar. Typographic Widows – Remove widows in post titles. Widget Display – Set rules for widget visibility. Toolbelt is Private Every week there’s a new story about Facebook (or Google, or Amazon, or whoever) tracking people inappropriately, or selling user details. Or some security breach that leaks users passwords or credit card info. Privacy is a big topic and frankly, it’s scary how much big corporations like Google, Facebook, and Twitter know. To ensure Toolbelt is as privacy focused as possible it: Does not phone out. No data is shared with third parties. Does not use standard social sharing javascripts (loaded from social networks servers). Does not track your usage of the plugin. Does not add generator comments, or secret promotional comments to your site html. Toolbelt is Fast Slow websites make me sad. I don’t want to add anything to Toolbelt that will impact site load speed. My Google Pagespeed score should not move from 100. Why? Faster sites are shown to increase conversions and time on site. Google loves fast sites and improves their search rankings. In addition fast sites are great for people with slower internet access, or on mobile data, and use less resources to generate the page. So many benefits! To be fast Toolbelt: Doesn’t use jQuery or any other javascript framework. All javascript is vanilla js, and minified. Minifies all assets (JS and CSS). Loads all assets inline. They are already small, and loading them directly on the page means there are no server requests. Only loads things when they are needed. JS and CSS are only loaded for activated modules. Very few options. There’s one main database option, an array that stores what modules are active. And another that stores settings for some modules. Uses the minimum code possible. Minimum Javascript and PHP. Less code means more speed, and fewer bugs. All options are disabled by default. You enable only the ones you need. Built for developers Toolbelt is built with developers in mind. It has a collection of hooks and filters to enable you to make the modules work the way you want. If you’re intersted to jump in the project, there are opportunities for developers at all levels to help out. Contribute to Toolbelt on GitHub and join the party. 🎉 The code can be found on Github Documentation with code examples can be found on the wiki You can reach out to me with questions or problems on Twitter