Related Posts for WordPress

Manually select related posts and pages for your WordPress content, with full support for custom post types.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 8.0+

Features

• AJAX-powered search to find related posts from the post edit screen
• Single-click add/remove of relationships
• Reciprocal linking (optional) — adding A→B automatically adds B→A
• Custom post type support
• Widget, shortcode, and automatic insertion below post content
• Manual or automatic ordering (date, title, random)
• Thumbnail support
• Multilingual: German, French, Italian, Dutch, Indonesian

Installation

1. Upload the microkids-related-posts folder to /wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate through the Plugins menu
3. Configure under Settings → Related Posts

Usage

Automatic display

Enable auto-display in Settings — related posts appear below post content automatically.

Shortcode

Place [related-posts] anywhere in post content.

Filter by post type:

[related-posts posttype=page]

Widget

Add the Related Posts widget to any sidebar via Appearance → Widgets.

Screenshots

The plugin will appear in the write/edit post screen.

The Related Posts options page allows you to completely customize the way related posts are displayed.

The Related Posts widget lets you automatically display related posts in your dynamic sidebar.

Changelog

4.0.5

• Removed unused CSS (dead .MRP_search_utility rule and an empty #MRP_relatedposts a rule in the admin stylesheet)

4.0.4

• Security: fixed CSRF vulnerability on options page (missing nonce verification; hardcoded fake nonce replaced with wp_nonce_field)
• Security: whitelisted header_element (h1–h6) and order option values to prevent injection
• Security: added esc_html() on all frontend output; esc_attr() on admin form fields
• Security: added current_user_can('manage_options') check in options handler
• Security: added nonce verification on AJAX search endpoint
• Modernized: replaced deprecated $wpdb->escape() with esc_sql()
• Modernized: asset loading converted to wp_enqueue_script()/wp_enqueue_style() with admin_enqueue_scripts hook; AJAX URL passed via wp_localize_script()
• Modernized: AJAX endpoint converted from admin_init hack to proper wp_ajax_mrp_search hook
• Modernized: replaced WP_PLUGIN_URL and get_option('siteurl') with plugins_url()
• Modernized: fixed register_widget() class name casing
• Modernized: all raw SQL replaced with $wpdb->prepare() throughout
• Modernized: replaced extract() in widget with direct array access
• Modernized: updated load_plugin_textdomain() — removed deprecated second argument
• Modernized: JS escape() replaced with encodeURIComponent()
• Cleaned .po language files: removed stale absolute machine paths, added Language: headers, fixed language labels
• Removed donate widget and dead external links

4.0.3

• Fixed bug preventing related posts from showing when using automatic sorting with reciprocal linking off

4.0.2

• Added hook for proper database configuration when upgrading

4.0.1

• Fixed DB columns for manual positions not being generated correctly
• Fixed automatic ordering not updating in settings

4.0

• Added thumbnail support
• Added manual ordering of related posts
• Added default CSS file
• Improved admin UI layout

3.0

• Custom post type support
• Controlled ordering (date, title, random)
• Internationalization support
• Fixed non-Western character support

2.5

• Multiple widget instance support
• Improved AJAX search

2.4

• Shortcode support ([related-posts])

2.0

• Automatic display below post content
• Widget support
• Related pages support