I’ve always liked the idea of having related entries shown - it’s a smart system of navigation and helps explore the knowledge available. Hence the first plugin I installed on this Wordpress-based blog was Related Posts by Alexander Malov & Mike Lu.
The aim behind the related posts plugin is to show similar entries already made on your blog, regardless of their category. Think of it as displaying search results before the reader has searched. That’s how useful it can be if it works.
However, the Wordpress plugin did not give very good results when used on this site. Upon investigating the code, I discovered it was only using the post’s URL to compare the current post with other entries. Since my weblog URLs are based on the page title, which on this site doesn’t always highlight keywords from the entry, this was unsurprisingly not proving effective.
The plugin provided the option for you to put hidden keywords in your post which would be used. However I didn’t want to go back and add keywords to my old posts. Not to mention I’d forget the standard keywords between writing posts 
Tagging is a job for the computer, not a human…
So I’ve hacked up a modified version, which takes the post content, and calculates word frequency using weightings that can easily be modified (lines 57-62 of the code) for different parts of the post (eg URL, title, content). It then uses these details to match against the MySQL full-text index, (hopefully) returning more relevant results.
The script currently does not use any stemming algorithm or match against category IDs. Those are the most obvious features to add but the latter would require the MySQL query being reworked, and it was bedtime!
If you want to see the MySQL full-text ranking (as shown on this site next to each related posts link at present on this blog) to give you an idea of the certainty of each match being shown, uncomment line 161 in related-posts.php.
The code is not supported and was hacked because I was curious about recommendation algorithms. Improvements or suggestions are welcome. You are free to use and modify this code.
Question: Is there some way to manage file uploads like above from within Wordpress? I’ve uploaded it manually as the ‘upload’ box on the “Write Post” screen said a php file wasn’t a valid image!
35 comments ↓
Peter,
Two quick things…
1) To answer your question, if you install the Mime-config plugin you should be able to add PHP files to the system so that you can upload them using the built in upload funcationality.
2) On my site I’m using the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and I’ve gone to great pains to go back and tag all of my posts with key words. I wonder if there would be a way for your hack to also take these into consideration?
Personally, I think that words found in the title and the UTW tags should carry considerably more weight than other words in the content, but it sounds like a good idea for everything to be considered.
Finally, the link to the original Related Posts plugin in down, so I wonder if you could describe the usage of your version of the plugin?
Thanks,
John
Thanks John, I’ll upgrade to 2.1 first and then install that plugin if they haven’t dealt with it in the core.
As to UTW, yes if the keywords are in a separate database field then it’ll be fine to put great weighting on them. If you look at the source of my modified plugin, there’s a lot of commenting around the weighting algorithm, which should help to adjust it. Mine is very crude (though less crude than the origianl) - FWIW the title should already have a double or triple weighting.
I’m afraid I’ve no clue about its usage - drop it with the original files in the plugins directory I imagine and then activate it. Sorry - I hope the original page comes back up!
Kind regards,
Peter
Peter,
This plugin (written by a priest named Rob Marsh) seems to do what you are after:
http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
You don’t say anywhere how to use the plug-in, it’s ok for the likes of me because I can look through your code and find the function I need to call. But for the casual blogger they wouldn’t have a clue. You need to modify your post with usage.
Simon,
I didn’t provide any usage instructions as they were on the original site, which the modified code was supposed to complement rather than replace. Now that site’s disappeared I’ll have a dig and see if I can find any…
I can help you out there:
Usage of WP_Related-posts Plugin.
Default include,
into your template file where you want the plugin to show. Edit the plugins default options under the plugins >> Related Posts Options in your wordpress admin window.If you wish to override the default options when including in a template then use the following hierarchy when calling the function:
related_posts($limit=5, $len=10, $before_title = '', $after_title = '', $before_post = '', $after_post = '', $show_pass_post = false, $show_excerpt = false);$limit = Number of related posts to return.
$len = Length of excerpt to show if excerpt is set to true.
$before_title = What to display before each related post, I use li tags as they allow for easy styling.
$after_title = Same as before title just after it.
$before_post = What to display before each excerpt.
$after_post = What to display after each excerpt.
$show_pass_post = Show passworded posts.
$show_excerpt = If set to true, show an excerpt of the post limited to the length set by $len.
Hope that helps
Ah i forgot to remove the related_posts() wrapped in php include tags.
Excellent - thanks Simon!
Hi Peter. I just thought that I’d drop a quick note to you, as I’d been looking for an alternative to what I had been using. I noticed that no one has pointed out the new link for the original Related Posts plugin, so here it is:
http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries
Just what I needed, thanks for the great job
I’m confused, so we copy what Simon has posted out of own related posts file into our template for it work without the php code or what?
[...] them a list of related posts at the end of each blog post. You can accomplish this by using the modified Related Posts plugin from Peter Bowyer. He has enhanced the original plugin by Alexander Malov & Mike Lu [...]
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I see the my comments show wrong.
Correction:
Here is
Hi. I’m glad to you publish this plugin..
But, I want to the related post plugin don’t show the after more tags of posts.
How can I do this?
Hi Peter. Thanks for this absolutely excellent plugin!
My questions:
1. Does this work with WP 2.3 (before I screw up my production sites)?
2. Has anyone tried this with the “Similar Posts” plugin and compared the performance or accuracy? http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/
Thanks!
I think this is a good effort but the “Similar Posts” plugin is a godsend. It just works, the options are clear and concise, and the code is squeaky clean. For anyone who’s grappling with this plugin (as I was).
[...] 2.0.4. Updated at 11:26 am on 20 Feb 2008 Just found an “improved version” of the Related Entries plugin by Peter Bowyer. Just overwrite the exisitng relate-posts.php with the one you download from Peter’s [...]
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Hmmm. I tried to “override” the default (I have set up in the options page) of 5 items to 3 items using the parameters. Didn’t seem to work. I still get 5 items even though I set the parm to $limit=3. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.
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[...] Related Posts - This plugin is a very useful plugin. It shows similar posts already made on your blog, regardless of their category thereby makes readers read other posts that are related to the current post. It is also one of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin because, it increases internal linking on your blog. After few days i found an “improved version” of Related Entries plugin by Peter Bowyer. [...]
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