The best related posts plugin

  • I can’t tell you how gorgeous this plugin is. I used nRelate for several years, and then they went out of business. I was left searching for a related posts plugin and none of them seemed to suit my needs. They all had too much focus on advertising, too little customization…

    Then I found this plugin. Contextual Related Posts has everything I need. The default styling (with the “Style attributes” radio button checked) looks absolutely AMAZING on my site. And I have complete control over the thumbnails. I love this plugin!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Author Ajay

    (@ajay)

    Geoff, Thank you for the detailed 5-star review!

    My plugin won’t make you money through advertising, but it should definitely help display related content to your visitors ??

    Thread Starter Geoff_A

    (@geoff_a)

    Unfortunately, less than an hour after writing this I got an email from my web host (WP Engine) that this plugin is on their disallowed list, due to the resources used by related post plugins. They only allow related post plugins that offload functionality to third-party servers, like Jetpack.

    I am now left with the difficult task of either customizing Jetpack Related Posts to look like CRP (even though I hire a web designer, I’m not sure he could do this), or switching hosts. Bummer ??

    Plugin Author Ajay

    (@ajay)

    Is it WP Engine?

    If it is WP Engine, I can’t confirm for sure if this is the case, but you could check with them if they can upgrade your server to run mySQL 5.6 or move you to one which has this.

    mySQL 5.6 uses innoDB which allows you to create FULLTEXT indices (previous versions only support this on myISAM). InnoDB is supposed to scale better.

    If they do that, you should check if they will allow you to run CRP on this server. Do let me know if they support this.

    One thing to note that CRP uses an aggressive caching system which massively improves performance when enabled.

    Thread Starter Geoff_A

    (@geoff_a)

    Thanks for the help. Yes, it is WP Engine. I relayed your post to them, and posted their response below.

    “Unfortunately, none of the current hardware we use currently runs MySQL 5.6, and this cannot be changed on a per-account basis. Related posts plugins can be great for traffic flow, but the often wreak havoc on database processes. The Jetpack version is the only one we currently recommend.”

    I am not surprised they didn’t make an exception, given that this plugin is on their disallowed list https://wpengine.com/support/disallowed-plugins/

    I’m going to work around the limitations of Jetpack, since the benefits of WPE vastly outweigh me switching to a private server.

    Plugin Author Ajay

    (@ajay)

    Geoff,

    Thanks for the update. It’s unfortunate about this case. I personally run a VPS and get nowhever close to the traffic that I believe you might have.

    I don’t believe they will make an exception for any related posts plugin that doesn’t do the processing on an external server

    JetPack is a good option in this case, since being run by Automattic, they easily have the hardware to handle this.
    But the costs associated to run a server independently by me would never work.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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