Related Articles is a lightweight WordPress plugin

Related Articles is a lightweight free WordPress plugin for displaying clean, responsive related article cards on your website. It shows random, newest, or recently modified posts from the current article category, selected categories, or a fallback category, without loading external scripts, tracking widgets, remote assets, or unnecessary dashboard nonsense.

The plugin works with the [related_articles] shortcode, so you can place related posts inside articles, pages, widget areas, sidebars, footer sections, block layouts, classic editor content, or any page builder layout that supports WordPress shortcodes.

What Related Articles Does

Related Articles adds a simple related posts section to your WordPress website.

When the shortcode is used on a post, the plugin can detect the current article category and show other published articles from the same category. If the article belongs to several categories, the plugin can use all current post categories, which helps make the output feel more genuinely related.

If there are not enough posts in the selected category or categories, the plugin can fill the missing slots with published posts from any category. This avoids sad little empty sections when a category only has one or two articles.

The current article is excluded automatically, so the plugin does not recommend the page people are already reading. Lovely, because recommending the same article below itself would be a bit daft.

Why Use Lightweight Related Articles?

Many related posts plugins try to be too clever.

They add tracking, complex algorithms, external services, database-heavy queries, analytics panels, upsells, thumbnail regeneration drama, aggressive recommendations, or mysterious background behaviour nobody asked for.

Related Articles is built for a simpler purpose.

It gives you a clean related articles section using normal WordPress posts, categories, shortcodes, local markup, and cached output. It does not try to become a content marketing platform, machine-learning recommendation engine, dashboard circus, or a needy plugin that wants attention every time you open WordPress.

It simply displays related article cards where you place the shortcode.

A Simple WordPress Related Articles Plugin

Related Articles is designed to do one job clearly.

It displays selected related posts based on the current article category, a chosen category, or a fallback category from the settings page. The output is shown as responsive article cards with optional featured images, article titles, excerpts, published dates, and read more links.

The plugin includes a clean settings page in the WordPress dashboard under:

Posts > Related Articles

From there, you can control the visual output, default behaviour, article count, order mode, heading text, heading tags, image display, excerpt display, date format, read more style, and fallback message.

Benefits

Related Articles is built for people who want useful related posts without unnecessary noise.

There are no unwanted ads, no dashboard banners, no review begging, no surveys, no telemetry, no tracking, no cookies, and no premium circus hiding behind every useful setting.

The plugin does not need an external account. It does not require API keys. It does not connect to an external recommendation service. It does not send your website data, article content, visitor data, or usage information somewhere else.

It works inside WordPress using local plugin code and normal WordPress functions.

That makes it privacy focused by design. The plugin generates simple article cards from your own published posts. No tracking scripts are added. No external recommendation engine is contacted. No third-party content widgets are injected into your site.

No nonsense. No dashboard drama. No needy little background behaviour.

Compatibility

Related Articles is designed for modern WordPress websites.

The plugin is written to work with current WordPress versions and PHP 7.4 or newer. It uses standard WordPress functions, escaping, sanitization, shortcode handling, settings registration, transients, category queries, featured image handling, and normal frontend markup.

The output is simple and theme-friendly. The related articles wrapper uses clear layout rules, responsive grid behaviour, and careful CSS selectors to work well with most themes, child themes, block layouts, classic editor layouts, widget areas, and page builders that support shortcodes.

The plugin settings page is available under the Posts menu in the WordPress dashboard, which makes sense because the plugin is directly related to post content.

Features

• Adds related article cards to WordPress
• Uses the [related_articles] shortcode
• Works anywhere shortcodes are supported
• Automatically detects the current post category
• Can use all current post categories
• Can use a selected category by slug, name, or ID
• Can use a default fallback category from settings
• Excludes the current article automatically
• Default shown articles: 3
• Optional shortcode count override
• Optional shortcode column override
• Articles per row setting
• Supports 2, 3, 4, or 5 columns
• Responsive layout below 790px
• Optional section heading
• Section heading tag setting
• Related article heading tag setting
• Shortcode heading override
• Shortcode heading tag override
• Shortcode related article heading tag override
• Optional featured images
• Loads the original featured image URL where possible
• Calculates numeric width and height attributes for images
• Flexible image display for desktop and mobile
• Featured image width setting for screens above 790px
• Featured image width setting for screens below 790px
• Featured image border radius setting
• Optional equal height cards
• Optional excerpt display
• Excerpt length setting
• Excerpt source setting
• Manual excerpt first, manual only, or content only
• Optional published date display
• Date format setting
• Optional date suffixes such as 22nd
• Optional read more link
• Read more can be displayed as a button or text
• Custom read more text
• Order mode dropdown
• Random order
• Newest first
• Modified recently first
• Fill missing articles from any category
• Custom fallback message
• 12-hour cached output
• Cache flush when settings are saved
• Cache flush when posts are saved, trashed, or deleted
• Settings page inside the WordPress dashboard
• Settings link from the Plugins page
• WordPress.org update slug collision protection
• No external scripts
• No tracking
• No telemetry
• No cookies
• No external account required
• No API keys required
• No dashboard ads, surveys, or notification spam

How the Plugin Works

Related Articles checks the shortcode settings, saved plugin settings, and current post context when the shortcode is rendered.

If you use the basic shortcode:

[related_articles]

the plugin first checks the current article category. If the article belongs to more than one category and the “Use all current post categories” option is enabled, all assigned categories are used.

The plugin then queries other published posts from those categories and excludes the current article automatically.

If there are not enough related posts in the current category or categories, the plugin can fill the missing slots from any published post on the site. This keeps the section useful even when a category is still small.

The selected article IDs are cached for performance. This is especially useful when the order mode is set to Random, because WordPress random queries can become unnecessary database exercise if they run on every page load. The plugin avoids that by caching the shortcode output for 12 hours.

The cache is refreshed when plugin settings are saved, and also when posts are saved, trashed, or deleted.

How to Use the Shortcode

After installing and activating the plugin, add this shortcode wherever you want related articles to appear:

[related_articles]

This basic shortcode is usually enough.

When used inside a blog post, it shows related posts from the current article category. If the current article has several categories and the option is enabled, all current post categories are used.

You can also force a specific category by slug:

[related_articles category="wordpress"]

You can use a category ID:

[related_articles category_id="7"]

You can set the number of articles:

[related_articles category="wordpress" count="3"]

You can override the number of columns:

[related_articles category="wordpress" count="3" columns="3"]

You can override the section heading:

[related_articles heading="More to read"]

You can hide the section heading for one shortcode placement:

[related_articles heading=""]

You can override the section heading tag:

[related_articles heading="More to read" heading_tag="h2"]

You can override the related article heading tag:

[related_articles article_heading_tag="h4"]

You can show the read more link as text:

[related_articles read_more_as="text"]

Plugin Settings

The settings page is available in the WordPress dashboard under:

Posts > Related Articles

From the settings page, you can control the basic frontend output without editing plugin code.

You can adjust:

• Default category
• Use all current post categories
• Fill missing articles from any category
• Number of related articles
• Order mode
• Default section heading
• Section heading tag
• Related article heading tag
• Fallback message
• Section spacing
• Show featured image
• Featured image width for screens above 790px
• Featured image width for screens below 790px
• Featured image border radius
• Articles per row
• Make article cards equal height
• Show excerpt
• Excerpt length
• Excerpt source
• Show published date
• Date format
• Show nd, rd, th
• Show read more
• Show read more as button or text
• Read more text

This keeps the plugin flexible without turning it into a giant settings monster.

Default Category Setting

The default category works as a fallback.

If you use:

[related_articles]

inside a normal post, the plugin first tries to use the current post category. If the post has no category, or if the shortcode is used somewhere without a current post context, the plugin can fall back to the default category selected in the settings page.

This means the default category does not force every shortcode to use the same category. It is there as a safety net.

If you want to force a specific category, use the shortcode attribute instead:

[related_articles category="wordpress"]

or:

[related_articles category_id="7"]

Use All Current Post Categories

By default, the plugin can use all categories assigned to the current post.

For example, if an article is assigned to:

• WordPress
• Plugins
• Tech

then [related_articles] can search for related articles across all three categories.

If this option is disabled, the plugin uses only the first detected category.

Fill Missing Articles From Any Category

If the selected category does not have enough posts, the plugin can fill missing slots from any published category.

For example:

• Number of related articles: 3
• Current category has only 1 other article
• Fill missing articles is enabled

The plugin shows the 1 matching category article, then fills the remaining 2 slots from other published posts.

The current article is still excluded.

This keeps the related section alive while a website is still growing and some categories are not full yet.

Order Mode

Related Articles includes three order modes:

• Random
• Newest
• Modified recently

Random is useful when you want the section to rotate occasionally and expose different older articles.

Newest is useful when you want related content to favour recent posts.

Modified recently is useful when you regularly update older articles and want refreshed content to appear more often.

Random output is cached, so visitors do not trigger a fresh random database query on every page load.

Section Heading

The default section heading is shown above the related articles grid.

The default heading is:

Related Articles

If the default heading field is left empty, no heading is shown by default.

You can override the heading on individual pages using:

[related_articles heading="More to read"]

You can hide it for one placement with:

[related_articles heading=""]

Heading Tags

The plugin has separate heading tag controls for the section heading and each related article title.

The section heading tag controls this part:

Related Articles

The related article heading tag controls each article title inside the card.

Both settings accept h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, or h6.

If someone types H3, the plugin outputs lowercase h3 on the frontend. If someone types something invalid, the plugin falls back to h3.

This gives you simple control over heading hierarchy without editing template files.

Featured Images

Related Articles can display featured images above each related article title.

The plugin tries to load the original featured image URL where possible. If the original image URL is not available, it falls back to the full image URL.

It calculates numeric width and height attributes based on the selected image display width and the original image ratio. This helps the browser reserve the image space before the image fully loads, reducing layout shift.

The image remains flexible with CSS, so it can shrink on smaller screens and does not overlap the card layout.

If a post has no featured image, the image area is skipped. No broken placeholder is shown.

Excerpt Options

Related Articles can show a short excerpt under each article title.

The excerpt source can be set to:

• Manual excerpt first, then content
• Manual excerpt only
• Content only

The default excerpt length is 22 words.

If the selected excerpt source returns no text, the excerpt area is skipped for that article.

Published Date Options

Related Articles can show the published date under each article excerpt or title.

Available date formats include:

• DD Month YYYY
• Month DD, YYYY
• DD/MM/YYYY
• MM/DD/YYYY
• DD.MM.YYYY
• MM.DD.YYYY
• YYYY-MM-DD

The plugin can also show date suffixes such as nd, rd, and th.

For example:

22nd May 2026

If the published date setting is disabled, the date is not shown.

Read More Options

Related Articles can show a read more link below each article card.

The link can be displayed as:

• Button
• Text

Button keeps the styled red outline button.

Text keeps a simple inline link style.

You can also hide the read more link completely. The article title and featured image still remain clickable, so visitors can still open the related article.

The default read more text is:

Read more

You can change it from the settings page.

Styling the Frontend Output

Related Articles includes clean CSS selectors for frontend styling.

Useful selectors include:

• .related-articles-section
• .related-articles-section-heading
• .related-articles
• .related-article
• .related-article-image-link
• .related-article-image-link img
• .related-article-title
• .related-article-title a
• .related-article-excerpt
• .related-article-date
• .related-article-read-button
• .related-articles-empty
• .related-articles-equal-height
• .related-articles-hide-read-button
• .related-articles-read-more-as-text

You can use these selectors in your theme, child theme, custom CSS area, or page builder CSS panel.

The default frontend layout is intentionally simple. Article cards display in a responsive grid and stack into a single column on smaller screens. This keeps the layout readable without forcing horizontal scrolling or theme-breaking nonsense.

During the current development version, frontend CSS is kept inline inside the plugin PHP file. That keeps development fast and avoids juggling extra files while the design is still being adjusted.

Privacy Focused and Quiet by Design

Some WordPress plugins install more than just a feature.

They bring dashboard banners, upsells, popups, remote scripts, tracking calls, review begging, analytics panels, external accounts, and other little annoyances nobody asked for.

Related Articles does not work like that.

It does not need to contact an external server to display related posts. It does not need to collect analytics. It does not need to ask for your email address. It does not need to add tracking cookies. It does not need a third-party recommendation service.

It just displays related articles from your own WordPress posts.

That is the whole point.

Performance and Cache Behaviour

Related Articles is designed to avoid unnecessary database work.

The plugin uses efficient post queries with:

• Published posts only
• Post IDs only during selection
• No found rows
• Sticky posts ignored
• Term cache disabled where not needed
• Meta cache only primed when featured images are enabled
• Cached shortcode output

Shortcode output is cached for 12 hours.

The cache is refreshed when:

• You click Save Changes on the plugin settings page
• A post is saved
• A post is trashed
• A post is deleted

This keeps the output fresh enough without running random queries on every page load.

WordPress.org Update Notice Protection

The plugin includes update notice protection for private/custom plugin use.

Because “Related Articles” is a generic plugin name, WordPress may otherwise confuse a custom plugin with an unrelated plugin from WordPress.org if the slug matches. That can create a misleading “Update available” notice for a plugin that is not actually yours.

Related Articles includes an Update URI header and an update transient safety filter to help prevent WordPress from matching it with an unrelated public plugin.

That fixes the annoying “this is not even our plugin” update nonsense.

How to Download and Install

Download the latest version of Related Articles from the plugin page.

After downloading the ZIP file:

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Open Plugins > Add New Plugin.
3. Click Upload Plugin.
4. Choose the downloaded ZIP file.
5. Click Install Now.
6. Activate the plugin.
7. Go to Posts > Related Articles to adjust the settings.
8. Add the shortcode where you want related articles to appear.

Once the shortcode is added, the plugin will display related articles based on the current post category, selected shortcode attributes, and saved settings.

Example Use Cases

You can use Related Articles in several simple ways.

• A blog can show related articles below each post.
• A plugin website can show other plugin articles from the same category.
• A news site can show more posts from the current topic.
• A documentation site can recommend related guides.
• A personal website can help visitors discover older posts.
• A magazine-style website can keep people reading without using external recommendation widgets.
• A privacy-focused website can display related content without third-party tracking scripts.
• A small website can use category-based related posts without installing a heavy recommendation plugin.

A Small Plugin That Does One Useful Job

Related Articles is a small WordPress plugin for a simple but useful task.

It displays related article cards from your own published posts, gives visitors a clean way to discover more content, and lets you control the basic output from a clear settings page.

It does not add ads, tracking, surveys, external scripts, telemetry, outgoing background requests, or noisy dashboard clutter.

If you want simple WordPress related articles without unnecessary fluff, Related Articles gives you a straightforward way to do it.

Download Related Articles Plugin

Download the latest version 1.0.7 below and install it through the WordPress plugin uploader. Simple, quick, and no unnecessary ritual.

If you have any questions about this WordPress plugin, feel free to leave a comment. Before hitting the Post Comment button, please make sure your question is detailed, relevant, and actually about the plugin. Random mystery reports are difficult to fix, even with coffee.