Paul

Dave Goodchild

!! WARNING: Before activating this plugin, please DO NOT deactivate the previous Article Directory plugin if you have it installed !!
If you do deactivate, you will lose your settings. Once you have activated this new plugin, you may go to the plugins page and deactivate the old one. 
That way we make a backup of your settings because the old plugin is set to delete your settings automatically when you deactivate.
Please note: I’m not the original author but I’m open to suggestions on ways to add to and develop out the plugin. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the forums.
This is taken directly from the original <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/article-directory" rel="ugc">Article Directory plugin</a> last updated 3 years ago (2011-1-16), and made compatible with WordPress 3.9 and 
it’s updated database system.
Displays the structured list of categories (like in article directory), which can be easily customized with CSS. Also allows authors to publish articles and change their profile bypassing the admin interface. See an example at <a href="http://articlesss.com/" title="Article Directory" rel="nofollow ugc">Articlesss.com/</a>.
Standard features for categories list:
<ul>
<li>Showing an amount of articles in parent and child categories.</li>
<li>Showing a category description in link title.</li>
<li>Showing the empty categories.</li>
<li>Using hierarchy for subcategories.</li>
<li>Excluding a specified categories.</li>
</ul>
Special features for categories list:
<ul>
<li>Simple and handy design using CSS. The structure of categories is the multilevel list, which can be altered easily with CSS, as you need. The parent category have the <code><div></code> container to mark it out with CSS as a parent.</li>
<li>Parent category is showing amount of articles in subcategories. The character also include the number of articles in this parent category.</li>
<li>Showing a specified amount of child categories (2nd level).</li>
<li>Showing a categories in specified amount of columns.</li>
<li>Hiding all subcategories.</li>
<li>Adding an icons for each category in the list using CSS.</li>
</ul>
Additional features:
<ul>
<li>Authors can add articles and change their profile bypassing the admin interface.</li>
<li>Displaying the “Terms of article publication” on article submission page.</li>
<li>Excluding the child categories articles from the parent categories archive pages.</li>
<li>Ability to get an article source code.</li>
</ul>

Article Directory Redux

Displays the list of categories like in article directory and allows authors to publish articles and change their profile bypassing the admin area.

cfischer83

Does your website utilize categories and tags? Does it use custom taxonomies? If so, this plugin will find similar content 
based on all your taxonomies. There are two ways to show related posts within your page.
<ul>
<li>The first way to show related content on your post is to use the widget provided. This only works when is_single() is true</li>
<li>The second way to show similar content on your site is to use the pk_related_return($post->ID); function which can be 
called programmatically anywhere you wish!</li>
</ul>
The Widget included with this plugin gives you the option to limit the amount of posts; it allows you to determine which 
fields to show: Featured Image, Author, Date, and Excerpt (Title is required); it allows you to determine which 
variant of the featured image to show: thumbnail, medium, large, or full. As of version 2.0, you can now decide whether the 
‘similar posts’ sorting prefers posts that are newer or posts that were created closer to the date of the post you’re 
viewing.
If you find the Widget doesn’t meet your needs or is too limiting, you can call the functionality programmatically using 
this function:
<pre><code>pk_related_return($post->ID, $args);
</code></pre>
Where $post->ID is the ID of the post for which you are wanting to show related articles.
The $args parameter is an array with the following values available to you (more coming soon):
<ul>
<li>posts_per_page (int defaults to 5)</li>
<li>thumbnail_size (string consisting of one of these values: “thumbnail”, “medium”, “large”, “full”. Defaults to thumbnail).</li>
<li>sort_prefer (string consisting of one of these values: “newest”, “closest”. Defaults to newest).</li>
</ul>
An example might be:
<pre><code><?php
$args = array (
 'posts_per_page' => 6,
 'thumbnail_size' => 'medium',
 'sort_prefer' => 'closest'
);
</code></pre>
The return value of pk_related_return is an array of objects that includes most of the fields within WordPress’s posts 
table plus permalink and featured image.
Future Additions:
Allow the user to specify only certain content types (posts, pages, custom) in a request. This would allow you to specify 
only products get returned, or only blog posts. This would only be an issue if content types share taxonomies.

Article Directory Redux vs Similar Posts Ontology