Finding a plugin which displays related posts in your sidebar only isn’t that easy as most related post plugins display related posts at the end of the post. But what if you only want to display them in your sidebar?
If you have already inserted links manually at the end of all your posts or your theme does this automatically then you don’t want to install a plugin which adds more related posts in the same position on your site.
That’s where YARPP comes in. YARPP can be configured to display related post links in a widget area and offers the option of disabling related posts in your content area.
Matt Cutts (Head of Google Webspam) & Matt Mullenweg (Founder of WordPress) both offer testimonials on YARPP.
Why Display Related Posts in Sidebar
Why not just display related posts after your content? Displaying links to related posts in your sidebar means you can keep the links above the fold. In my opinion, this is better for Seo and will attract more click thru’s than simply displaying the links below your content.
If you look at the WordPress.org Codex you’ll see this is how they do things as well. Your readers may not scroll all the way to the end of your posts while looking for the information they need to solve the problem they have.
How To Display Related Posts in Your Sidebar
Firstly, install the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
If you’re new to WordPress here’s a simple tutorial on How To Install a Plugin for WordPress.
Go to Settings > Related Posts (YARPP) where you can choose to display related posts by Category in the Relatedness section.
Make sure you uncheck Automatically display related posts? more>
You could choose to display related post links by tags if you don’t have categories setup or aren’t using the category/post custom permalink structure.
Display Relatedness in Screen Options
Click the Screen Options tab in the top right hand corner to display the Relatedness options. Here you’ll find a check box for Relatedness options which you can use to determine how you want the plugin to search for related posts.
Personally, i used the Category check box and titles as my tags are mostly unique and not used for the same purpose as categories.
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