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YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

By YARPP

Content Management / Blog & Article Publishing

Reviewed by Abdul Hameid

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin Review - In-Depth Analysis

YARPP displays related posts to boost engagement and SEO. It uses a powerful algorithm and caching for efficiency.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.26/10

User Rating

4.8/5 (based on 1164+ reviews)

Active Installations

100,000+

Update Frequency

Outstanding It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5.49 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

YARPP, or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, is a customizable and efficient plugin for WordPress that shows related content such as posts, pages, and custom post types. By introducing visitors to relevant content, YARPP enhances user engagement and increases pageviews.

The plugin features an advanced algorithm that considers various factors like post titles, content, tags, and categories to find related posts. It also includes built-in caching for faster performance.

YARPP offers flexible display options, including automatic placements, shortcodes, and widgets. It supports multiple languages and custom post types, making it versatile for different use cases. Additionally, it is compatible with WordPress Multisite and WooCommerce.

Comparing to Alternatives

YARPP is a popular related posts plugin with several alternatives available that offer different features and approaches to related content.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly customizable output to fit different site needs
Minimal setup required to get started
Effective caching for better performance on large sites
Consistently reliable with few compatibility issues
Free and widely used with strong community support

Weaknesses

Has had multiple security vulnerabilities in the past requiring updates
No official pro version with additional premium features
Some users may find customization options complex at first
Occasional issues with very long post titles in display

User Sentiment Analysis

With a high rating of 4.8 out of 5 from over 1100 users, the sentiment is overwhelmingly positive, highlighting ease of use and effectiveness.

Positive highlights

'It took me little time to customize the output the way I wanted it' - Stuey
'YARPP does its job well' - jchopkins
'Highly Effective Tool' - Alvand WP
'Still unbeatable, Still free, Still effective' - Zumbo
'The best related posts plugin!' - Vladimir Unguru

Common complaints

Weaknesses

Past security vulnerabilities require users to keep plugin updated
No pro version limits advanced feature availability
Some minor display issues with long titles
Customization may require some learning curve

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Website owners looking for a free, reliable, and customizable related posts plugin with strong community support and good performance on large sites.

Not ideal for

Users who require guaranteed top-tier security without frequent updates or those wanting premium features only available in paid versions.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version includes all core features needed to display related posts with customizable output and caching for performance.

Final Verdict

YARPP is a highly effective and customizable related posts plugin that enjoys strong user approval and a robust feature set for free. Its caching capabilities and ease of use make it suitable for a wide range of WordPress sites.

However, users should be aware of its history of security vulnerabilities and the lack of a paid pro version. Keeping the plugin updated is essential to maintain security and stability. Overall, YARPP remains a top choice for related posts functionality in WordPress.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin plugin.

content discovery

SEO

Screenshots

FAQ

Most likely you have “no related posts” right now because the default “match threshold” is too high. Here’s what we recommend to find an appropriate match threshold: lower your match threshold in the YARPP “Algorithm” options to something very low, like 1. (If you don’t see the match threshold, you may need to display the “Algorithm” options via the “Screen Options” tab at the top.) Most likely the really low threshold will pull up many posts that aren’t actually related (false positives), so look at some of your posts’ related posts and their match scores. This will help you find an appropriate threshold. You want it lower than what you have now, but high enough so it doesn’t have many false positives.

Option 1:

On the edit post page, uncheck “Display Related Posts” in the YARPP box. Be sure to update or publish to save your changes.

Option 2:

Add  to the HTML code of any post to prevent related posts from displaying.

Option 3:

Use the noyarpp filter. For example:

// Disable YARPP Automatic Display in specific categories function yarpp_disable_categories() {   // Examples of in_category usage: https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/in_category   if ( in_category( array( 'my_category_1_slug', 'my_category_2_slug' ) ) ) {     return true;   } } add_filter( 'noyarpp', 'yarpp_disable_categories' );

These solutions only work if you are using “Automatic Display” in the “Display Options” section. If you are programatically calling yarpp_related(), the shortcode [yarpp] from PHP code or the YARPP Block, you will need to do your own conditional checks.

If you’re familiar with CSS, you can override any YARPP styles by editing your theme’s style.css file, or any other CSS file you may have created that loads after the YARPP one. To edit your theme’s CSS file, go to “Appearance” then “Editor” and then click style.css in the right sidebar. Add changes at the bottom of the file and click “Save.” If you do edit this file, just make sure you add !important after each style declaration, to make sure they’ll override the YARPP rules.

Some common overrides that YARPP users have added are:

/* Reduces the title font size and displays more than two title lines */ .yarpp-thumbnail {height: 200px !important;} .yarpp-thumbnail-title {font-size:0.8em !important; max-height: 4em !important}  /* Centers the thumbnail section */ .yarpp-related-widget {text-align:center !important;}

Once you save any CSS changes, empty your browser’s cache and reload your page to see the effect.

If you use YARPP to show related products and want to exclude products that are sold out, use the following code snippet:

function yarpp_custom_wp_query($query) {     if(isset($query->yarpp_cache_type)){         $query->set('post_type', 'product');         $meta_query = [             'relation' => 'AND',             [                 'key' => '_stock_status',                 'value' => ['instock','onbackorder'],                 'compare' => 'IN',             ]         ];         $query->set('meta_query', $meta_query);     }      return $query; } add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'yarpp_custom_wp_query', 100);

Note: this filter applies after the related items were already calculated, so when it filters out an item you will see fewer related items than you requested.

You can similarly filter WordPress’ meta queries to include/excluded posts from YARPP’s related results.

As of YARPP v5.19.0, YARPP usually defaults to using WordPress’ default thumbnail size. This can be changed to another thumbnail size using the YARPP setting “Thumbnail Size”.

However, if you used YARPP before v5.19.0, or your theme defines a “yarpp-thumbnail” size, the default is the “yarpp-thumbnail”. To change “yarpp-thumbnail” size, add the following to your theme’s functions.php file with appropriate width and height variables:

add_image_size( 'yarpp-thumbnail', $width, $height, true );

When you do this, make sure you also set the YARPP setting “Thumbnail Size” to “yarpp-thumbnail”.

Each time you change YARPP’s thumbnail dimensions like this, you will probably want to have WordPress regenerate appropriate sized thumbnails for all of your images. We highly recommend the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin for this purpose.

Note: if you don’t use YARPP’s thumbnail size, you might want to avoid generating it for newly uploaded images to save space. To do that add the following code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file:

add_filter( 'yarpp_add_image_size', "__return_false" );

To make YARPP support your Custom Post Type (CPT), the attribute yarpp_support must be set to true when the CPT is registered. The CPT will then be available in the YARPP settings page.

'yarpp_support' => true

For example:

function register_my_cpt() {   $args = array(     'public' => true,     'label'  => 'Books',     'yarpp_support' => true,   );   register_post_type( 'book', $args ); } add_action( 'init', 'register_my_cpt' );

If you do not have access to the code which is registering the CPT, maybe because it is a third-party plugin that is creating it, you can still add the yarpp_support argument:

/**  * Filter the CPT to register more options  *  * @param $args       array    The original CPT args.  * @param $post_type  string   The CPT slug.  *  * @return array  */ function add_yarpp_support_to_post_types( $args, $post_type ) {    // If not our target CPT, exit.   if ( 'my_custom_post_type' !== $post_type ) {     return $args;   }    // Add additional YARPP support option.   $cpt_args = array(     'yarpp_support' => true   );    // Merge args together.   return array_merge( $args, $cpt_args ); } add_filter( 'register_post_type_args', 'add_yarpp_support_to_post_types', 10, 2 );

You should replace my_custom_post_type with the CPT that you need to add YARPP support to and add this code to the functions.php of your theme.

If you would like to programmatically control which post types are considered in an automatically-displayed related posts display, use the yarpp_map_post_types filter.

If you want to prevent the Review Notice from appearing you can use the function below:

/**  * Disable YARPP Review Notice  *  */ function yarpp_disable_review_notice() {   remove_action('admin_notices', array('YARPP_Admin', 'display_review_notice')); } add_action('admin_init', 'yarpp_disable_review_notice', 11);

Sure. Use the following code:

add_action(   'admin_init',   function(){     remove_all_filters('shareaholic_deactivate_feedback_form_plugins');   },   11 );

Contributors and developers

“YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

YARPP

Shareaholic

Free Version Docs Live Demo

WPS

7.26

Very Good

Ratings

4.8 out of 5 | 1164

Version

5.30.11

Last updated

1 year ago

Active installations

100,000+

WordPress version

6.7.10 or higher

PHP version

5.3 or higher

Languages

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Manual Related Posts

By Marcel Pol

WPS

6.74

Average

5/5

23+reviews

1k+

active installation

Tested with

7.1.3

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By bestweblayout

WPS

6.81

Average

3.5/5

13+reviews

800+

active installation

Tested with

6.7.10

YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin Review - In-Depth Analysis

Performance Overview

What It Does

Comparing to Alternatives

User Sentiment Analysis

Who Should Use This?

Pricing & Value

Final Verdict

Other Notable Features

Screenshots

FAQ

Contributors and developers

Ratings

Reviews (1164)

Sort by:

Contributors & Developers

Interested in development?

Changelog

Security Status

Secure

No Unpatched Vulnerabilities

Known Vulnerabilities (8)

Previous Versions

WPS

7.26

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