Related Posts Slider WordPress Plugin

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  • Overview
  • Features
  • Usage
  • FAQ
  • Changelog
  • Screenshots
  • Download

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List of related posts at the end of content or in sidebar let the visitors explorer similar posts from the blog. What if those listed posts appear in a slideshow with image from those posts. That will definitely attract visitors to click on the post to read more, and in that way the pageviews will increase on your blog. Many of us use links or thumbnails to showcase related posts, but how about having a box with movable or sliding contents. In case of thumbnails, you add very limited number of posts as related content, but in slider, you can add as many related contents as you want. As you know, showing related content on a post increases keyword strength which is good for getting more traffic from search engines.

Keeping these things in mind, we have come up with a plugin named “Related Posts Slider“ to show related posts in a slideshow on self hosted WordPress blogs. Related Posts Slider (RPS) will showcase related posts on different locations in your blog in a slider format where visitors can click on the link in left panel and see excerpt and featured image from that particular post in right panel. As our focus in this plugin is to showcase related posts in a sliding format, so worked on that only.

Demo

We have not worked on getting related posts as there are so many plugins available for the same purpose. For using “Related Posts Slider” on your WordPress blog, you will have to use “Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” also known as YARPP plugin or WordPress Related Posts Plugin (not both, just use one of these two) which is available for free on WordPress Plugin Directory. We picked YARPP because it is the most used related posts plugin with maximum customization and options. In future upgrades, we will try to make “Related Posts Slider” compatible with more related posts plugins like WordPress Related Posts.

Features and Benefits of Related Posts Slider plugin

1. Showcase related posts in slider format, either in news style or in horizontal carousel format
2. Arrow navigation to see more related posts, so add as many related posts as you want
3. Complete CSS customization from settings panel
4. 2 Pre Styled CSS provided with the plugin, one for dark colored theme and other for lighter theme
5. SEO benefits of showing more related posts on the post content page
6. Compatible with YARPP plugin and WordPress Related Posts Plugin
7. Widget option available for Related Posts Slider
8. Shortcode option to insert “Related Posts Slider” in between the content of a post
9. Translation ready

Adding related posts slider on your post content page will increase pageviews as well as the average time per visitor on blog.

1. If Yet Another Related Posts (YARPP) plugin is already installed then go to step 2. If no, then install and activate YARPP plugin on your WordPress blog
2. Download “Related Posts Slider” plugin and upload on your WP server at location “wp-content/plugin” folder thru FTP
3. Activate “Related Posts Slider” plugin from “Plugins” page
4. By default, the preview slider of related posts will start appearing automatically by end of the post content. You can change the placement of the slider from below the content to above the content or manual insertion from the plugin settings panel.

In case of manual insertion, You need to add the below piece of code in single.php (in most WP themes),

[code]<?php if(function_exists('get_related_posts_slider')) {get_related_posts_slider();} ?>[/code]

Now you can see the related posts appearing in a slider format at the location preferred by you.

As Shortcode support is available in Related Posts Slider, you can use the below shortcode anywhere in the post content to add the preview slider of related posts.

[rps]

You can customize the “Related Posts Slider” width, height, background and foreground colors, font size etc. from the plugin settings panel. For more information on that, read the plugin customization details.

Frequently asked questions for Related Posts Slider

Q. Related Posts are not appearing on the slider. Why the slider box is blank?

A. If the slider is not showing any related posts on the content page, it means YARPP is not able to pick related posts. You should customize the YARPP settings to select related posts properly. As YARPP is having threshold values and number of related posts options, you will have to set proper values to get related posts. To check whether YARPP is able to get related posts or not, the best way is to open the post in edit window and see the YARPP box which shows related posts in a list format.

Q. There is no change in the layout and design of related posts showing thru YARPP. Why so?

A. Even if you are using YARPP on your blog before installing Related Posts Slider, you will have to change the template code from YARPP code to Related Posts Slider code to get the posts in slider format.

Q. Is it compulsory to install “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin to install and add “Related Posts Slider”?

A. No. You can also install ‘WordPress Related Posts Plugin’ which is a bit lighter for the server (utilizes less resources) in case if you do not wish to use YARPP. Related Posts Slider is compatible with both the plugins.

Q. Is widget option available in Related Posts Slider?

A. Yes, Widget is available for RPS. You can add the slider in sidebar or any other widget ready area on your WordPress blog theme.

Q. Related Posts Slider is showing duplicate posts as the related posts. Any help?

A. Latest version of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) i.e. V3.2 is having a feature of related posts cache. Because of that, YARPP is showing duplicate posts as related posts and as Related Posts Slider takes the posts generated by YARPP to show them in slider, RPS is also showing that bug. But you can solve this bug at your end by adding &action=flush to the end of YARPP setting’s URL, read more about the fix for issue on this page.

Version 1.2 (02/13/2011)

1. Feature: Now supports “WordPress Related Posts” along with YARPP
2. Feature: Added new slider format i.e. horizontal carousel using jCarousel jQuery plugin
3. Fix: Shortcodes (like “caption”) were appearing in slider excerpt in preview section, fixed that.
4. Feature: Made the plugin translation ready

Version 1.2 (01/30/2011)

1. Upgrade to go with YARPP upgrade i.e YARPP 3.2. Do upgrade if using latest version of YARPP

Version 1.1 (01/29/2011)

1. Fix – Sometimes below content, the slider was not getting atatched. Rather it was showing

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Related Posts Slider
. This was when the content contains shortcode at the end. This update fixes the issue.

Default style CSS of Related Posts Slider

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For Dark Color Themes – Dark Codrops CSS Color

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Horizontal Carousel Format

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Important!! => Before installing this plugin, install either
1)Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (also known as YARPP), which is freely available on WordPress Plugin Directory. YARPP is one of the best related posts plugin for WordPress blogs and sites.

OR

2)WordPress Related Posts Plugin, which is also freely available on WordPress Plugin Directory. WordPress Related Posts plugin consumes less server resouces than YARPP but also has fewer options to pull the related posts as compared to YARPP.

Download Related Posts Slider 1.0

Credits
1. Compact News Previewer
2. jCarousel
3. jQuery JavaScript Library
4. WordPress Codex

WP Post Tabs
5th January 2011
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25 Responses to “Related Posts Slider WordPress Plugin”
  1. Cstrfreak says:
    January 10, 2011 at 7:14 am

    Great job with this plugin! Absolutely amazing! Thanks spacer

  2. Kishore Mylavarapu says:
    January 10, 2011 at 11:03 pm

    Great work .. superb plugin.

  3. Bilal Ahmad says:
    January 11, 2011 at 1:05 am

    I Reviewed the plugin in my blog. It is superb plugin. Great job admin.

  4. rohan @techlunatic.com says:
    January 12, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    what effect does it have on the sites load time? wont using an additional plugin slow down the site? you can pull off the same effect with wordpress inherent features like shortcodes. and it will have a zero downtime since they are inherently called after the entire page has finished downloading.
    On a diferent note, this is my first visit to your site an i must say this is the best customization of the thesis i have ever seen, good job there, and i am following your blog from now.:)

  5. Sanjeev Mishra says:
    January 13, 2011 at 3:57 pm

    Hi,

    I am glad that you liked our theme but this is not thesis or a custom thesis but a separate theme developed by Tejaswini. About the plugin, as adding plugins will definitely put certain load on site or server but its all about having an optimized plugins. As the plugin developed by Internet Techies Team goes thru so many optimization test, you will not find much difference on page load time after installing our plugins. Of course, the plugin will not cause downtime on your blog as it is just using the extracted posts from YARPP.

    Thanks for reading Internet Techies, hope to see you more here.

  6. Nihar says:
    January 16, 2011 at 11:57 pm

    Great plugin Sanjeev.

    It will definitely try this to reduce the bounce rate.

    I will let you know if i find any bugs or suggestions to share with you.

  7. Adriana Almeida says:
    January 29, 2011 at 9:41 am

    Hi. Amazing job with this plugin. Tks for that.

    But I have a big problem…

    Until today, the plugin was working perfectly. I was having the problem with the [rps] in some pages, so, I got really happy with the upgrade. But now, the plugin does not work anymore… It show only the same page who is calling the plugin (ex: Post 1 show as related post: Post 1)

    Since the YARPP had a upgrate too, first I think that the problem is with YARPP, but I ask this plugin to show the related topics automatically, outside of RPS, and it work just fine, showing all the related posts as it should do…

    Any help? I do something stupid or the new version is with problems?

    Tks for your work and attention and sorry my poor english! spacer

  8. Tejaswini says:
    January 30, 2011 at 2:12 am

    Thank you Adriana for bringing the point in notice.

    The YARPP upgrade in version 3.2 had some changes, that caused the issue. I just released the new version of RPS (i.e. 1.2) which will go with YARPP 3.2

    Please test it and let me know if it works.
    Regards,
    Tejaswini

  9. Adriana Almeida says:
    January 30, 2011 at 3:01 am

    Working like magic! spacer

    Thanks!

  10. S. says:
    February 14, 2011 at 3:10 pm

    I’ve a problem in my blog. The posts in the right column don’t scroll. Is the first install so I can’t know if is a problem of the plugin or of the theme. You can see a sample post here essepunto.it/2011/02/lg-optimus-one/.

  11. PokerPlasm says:
    February 15, 2011 at 7:02 am

    Great plugin! I am having a bit fo difficulty getting it to run here: www.canadagolf.com/destinations/excellent-courses-golf-vacation-ontario-canada/

    Everything works, except when I click on the titles on the left, it doesnt change on the right. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

  12. Tejaswini says:
    February 15, 2011 at 9:12 pm

    It seems that jQuery is loading twice on your post. Please check as this can be a JS conflict. Also, please use the Internet Techies Support System at clickonf5.com to create the ticket. This will help me to respond to your query fast, as I do not keep track of queries in comment section.

    Thank you.

    -Tejaswini

  13. Tejaswini says:
    February 15, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    I am not able to open the site, may be server is down this time.
    Please use the Internet Techies Support System at clickonf5.com to create the ticket. This will help me to respond to your query fast, as I do not keep track of queries in comment section.

    Thank you.

    -Tejaswini

  14. Shiva Chettri says:
    February 17, 2011 at 4:23 pm

    Hello Tejaswini,

    The plugin is really cool and I like it a lot, I am using it in my blog but I am wondering why this plugin is showing related posts even under my “Pages”, is not there any option to show the Related posts box only below the “Single Posts”. Check this for an example “Page” where it is displaying – www.netchunks.com/write-for-us/

  15. Melody says:
    February 19, 2011 at 8:08 pm

    The previous and next tab and links of 2nd to other related post don’t work (post links can’t be executed).

  16. Shiva says:
    February 21, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    It would have been great if you could add the related posts fetching feature in this very plugin itself since that way we may be able to save server resources, Even one plugin makes a lot of difference to the server load specially if you have a lot of other plugins installed. Nevertheless a great plugin, thanks a lot for this contribution to the community.

  17. Tejaswini says:
    February 22, 2011 at 10:20 am

    Thank you Shiva for a valuable suggestion. I would definitely think implementing an inbuilt related posts fetching capability in the upcoming upgrade. Well, also thanks for the compliments. We are working hard to make it more useful in coming days.

  18. Tejaswini says:
    February 22, 2011 at 10:48 am

    Hi Melody,

    Can you please create a support ticket at clickonf5.com so that I can look into it as well as keep track of it?
    -Tejaswini

  19. Tejaswini says:
    February 22, 2011 at 11:03 am

    Hi Shiva,

    I hope you have resolved the issue. I am giving this answer for other readers.

    In such cases when you do not want the slider on pages, just want in on posts, select the ‘Manual’ insertion method and embed the Related Posts template tag in your single.php at appropriate position. Do not put it on page.php as it is a WP default template used for pages.

    Thanks,
    Tejaswini

  20. Vivek Sancheti says:
    March 5, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    hi ,

    im in love with this plugin.
    I wanna use it on my blog eyuva.com but problem is that your plugin makes some changes in footer section of my template and as i am using an free template it doesnt allow to change anything footer section.

    so it there any solution for this ?

    when i use this plugin my template shows license violation message.

    please help me out.

  21. James McGill says:
    March 6, 2011 at 4:07 am

    I have been looking for a featured content slider with a vertical carousel and this seems to fit the bill perfectly, except it looks for related posts. Is there a way to specify that this use specific posts or pages for “featured content”?

    I really hope you say I can do so!

  22. Sanjeev Mishra says:
    March 10, 2011 at 11:43 pm

    Wait for few days as you will get that in our own “Smooth Slider”. Thanks for your patience.

  23. Sanjeev Mishra says:
    March 10, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    If you are facing any issue related to our plugin, you can create a support ticket at clickonf5.com to get that resolved soon. Thanks

  24. Marcus says:
    March 12, 2011 at 1:31 am

    Smooth Slider works very Good on my blog.

    But I would have it with pleasure so this slide endless and not return to the first Post.

    Is ist possible?

    Thx for an answer

  25. KaEx says:
    September 8, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    Thanks for this awesome plugin.
    I agree with Marcus and how can i edit size of widget? Because, sidebar area small from post area.

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