Chris

Related YouTube Videos is a free WordPress plugin that embeds a number of, well, YouTube videos that are related to your content. The list is put together by using the YouTube search API. And you can specify the relation between the videos and your content by:
<ul>
<li>the title of your current post, page or custom post type.</li>
<li>the tags of your current post, page or custom post type.</li>
<li>the categories of your current post, page or custom post type.</li>
<li>any keywords you specify.</li>
</ul>
Also, this plugin offers you two ways to embed related videos:
<ol>
<li>by using the shortcode [relatedYouTubeVideos] somewhere in your post/page content.</li>
<li>by using the WordPress widget “Related YouTube Videos” in any of your widget areas (multiple instances are possible).</li>
</ol>
<h4>Disclaimer / Important</h4>
As of April 2015 the YouTube API can only be accessed when you have a valid key for the data API. Also, the number of free requests per day is limited!
There is a nice and short video tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOYW7FO9rzA) on how to get such an API key. But it’s up to you to make sure your stay within the free limit or keep track of the costs when you need more than that!
Please read Youtube and Google’s terms and conditions for more details.
<h4>The Shortcode</h4>
I’m only going to explain the options/paramters for the shortcode but they work exactly the same for the widget, of course.
You can put the shortcode [relatedYouTubeVideos] anywhere you want inside the content of a page, post, or custom post type – as long as your WordPress theme is supporting shortcodes.
You can use the following options/parameters/attributes:
Appearance
<ul>
<li>id – You can specify the HTML id attribute for the wrapping <code><ul></code> element.</li>
<li>class – You can specify an additional HTML class name for the wrapping <code><ul></code> element</li>
<li>width – Width of the HTML video object</li>
<li>height – Height of the HTML video object</li>
<li>preview – “true” will only display the preview image and only load the video (via Javascript!) when this image has been clicked.</li>
<li>showVideoTitle – “true” if you want to show the video title right below the video itself. Can be styled via CSS class <code>.title</code></li>
<li>showVideoDescription – “true” if you want to show the video description below the video, respectively, when the video title is displayed right below the title. Can be styled via CSS class <code>.description</code> </li>
<li>autoplay – “true” if you want the video to automatically start playing when ready. This will obviously not work in preview mode!!</li>
<li>exclude – Comma separated list of post/page IDs where no videos shall be displayed.</li>
</ul>
Configuration
<ul>
<li>max – Number of videos (or search results) that will be returned. Can be any number between 1 and 10!</li>
<li>random – Select MAX number of videos out of RANDOM number of videos.</li>
<li>offset – START and OFFSET are interchangably the same and just other words for the same option.</li>
</ul>
YouTube
<ul>
<li>relation – Specify the kind of relation that shall be used for searching YouTube. Can either be ‘postTitle’, ‘postTags’, ‘postCategories’, or ‘keywords’ (in which case the attribute ‘terms’ will be used for the YouTube search).</li>
<li>terms – Search YouTube for these terms – no separating commas required.</li>
<li>exact – Set to ‘true’ will (try to) search for the exact phrase.</li>
<li>orderBy – Can either be ‘published’, ‘rating’, ‘viewCount’, (default) ‘relevance’.</li>
<li>lang – {2-letter-language-code} will show videos in that language.</li>
<li>region – {2-letter-country-code} will show videos that are actually viewable in that region/country.</li>
<li>author – Only show videos from a given YouTube User(name) .</li>
<li>filter – Add additional keywords or filtering search parameters. Those will always be added even when the relation is set to post title, tags, or so. You can also manually add post tags by adding ‘+postTags’, categories by adding ‘+postCategories’, the post title by adding ‘+postTitle’, post meta data by adding ‘+postMeta:key’ to the filter.</li>
<li>viewRelated – set to “no” or “false” will not show more related videos at the end of a clip.</li>
</ul>
I recommend always using the attributes ‘relation’, ‘max’, and if the relation shall be ‘keywords’ the ‘terms’ attribute. Depending on your design you might also set a custom width and height for the videos so they fit in properly.
Shortcode Example 1: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”postTags” max=”3″] Will show three videos coming back from the search YouTube for (all!) the tags you have assigned to this post or page.
Shortcode Example 2: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”keywords” terms=”monty python” max=”5″] Will show five Monty Python videos from YouTube.
Shortcode Example 3: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”keywords” terms=”real madrid” exact=”true” max=”2″] Will search for the exact phrase “Real Madrid” and (hopefully) not just anything “real”.
Shortcode Example 4: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”postTitle” max=”1″ orderBy=”viewCount” start=”1″] Will show the second most popular video (the first being skipped) relating to your post or page title.
Shortcode Example 5: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”keywords” terms=”monthy python” max=”1″ showVideoTitle=”true” showVideoDescription=”true”] Will show a Monty Python video, followed by the video title, followed by the video, followed by the video description.
Shortcode Example 6: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”keywords” terms=”monthy python” max=”1″ preview=”true”] Will show the thumbnail of a Monty Python video and load + play the video only when it’s being clicked.
Shortcode Example 7: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”postTitle” filter=”intitle:official -intitle:cover” max=”1″ preview=”true”] If the post title is about a music video (band and song title, for example) this will only show the official music video.
Shortcode Example 8: [relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”postTitle” filter=”+postCategories” max=”1″ preview=”true”] Will use the post title and a list of all categories the post is in to search YT.
<h4>The Widget</h4>
The widget almost works the same way. Or at least it has the same options for configuring the video request. If you log into your WordPress backend and go to the “Appearance > Widget” menu (given that your theme supports widgets) you can drag&drop a widget instance into the widget area of your choice.
The relatedYouTubeVideos widget allows multiple instances. So you can put as many widgets as you like into as many widget areas as you like.
The difference between the widget and the shortcode is not in terms of functionality but usually in the context they reside. Widgets usually go into sidebars or footers and alike and the same widget usually shows up for many, if not all pages, just the same. Shortcodes are placed inside the actual content and therefore will only show up when the page or post where they’re put is shown.
There is one functionality that only applies to widgets: In the options field “Hide on” you can set a list of comma separated, numerical post IDs on which the widget will not show up. This way you can easily exlude the widget on certain post. You can also use PAGE ids for that matter, since under the hood WordPress manages all “post type” IDs the same.
<h4>Randomize Results</h4>
The same keywords (or post title/tags) will ususally return the same video(s) for a period of time. Basically, that’s up to YouTube but in can take days, weeks or even months until fresh videos will show up.
When you set a numeric value for the RANDOM parameter/option you can get random videos from a pool of results. The MAX value plays along with the RANDOM value and both read like this: Show me {MAX} random videos out of {RANDOM} videos.
[relatedYouTubeVideos relation=”keywords” terms=”fast cars” max=”2″ random=”10″] will actually request 10 videos from YouTube but only show 2 random ones out of that 10.
So RANDOM will determine the size of the pool MAX videos will be chosen from.
<h4>System Requirements</h4>
In order to run this plugin you need the following components installed and enabled in your server and PHP environment:
<ul>
<li>PHP 5.1.2+</li>
<li>SimpleXML (usually is enabled by default anyways)</li>
<li>cURL (preferred) or fopen/fsockopen</li>
<li>OpenSSL + HTTPS wrapper (is only required if cURL is not available)</li>
<li>WordPress 3.0+</li>
</ul>
In general you should not have to worry about these things since they’re included in most web hosting packages nowadays. 
But to be sure you can download and install this plugin and then check the backend page. There is a “System Requirements” section that will show you exactly if you can good to go or if there is any problem.
In case you’re getting a “URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration” error you should make sure your PHP.ini file contains these two lines:
allow_url_include = on
allow_url_fopen = on
<h4>Available Languages:</h4>
<ul>
<li>English</li>
<li>German</li>
<li>
Serbo-Croatian – by Borisa Djuraskovic (<a href="http://www.webhostinghub.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Webhostinghub</a>) 
Developers can also use the API class outside the plugin context, for example in a theme template file. All you have to do is include the class (if it doesn’t already exist) and create an object like this:
/* Load the “Related YouTube Videos” API class if it does not exist yet. */ 
if( !class_exists( ‘RelatedYouTubeVideos_API’ ) ) {
$file = str_replace( ‘/’, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, ABSPATH ) . ‘lib’ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . ‘RelatedYouTubeVidoes’ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . ‘API.php’;
if( file_exists( $file ) ) {
<pre><code>include_once $file;
</code></pre>
}
} 
/* Only continue if the API class could be loaded properly. */ 
if( class_exists( ‘RelatedYouTubeVideos_API’ ) ) {
$RytvAPI = new RelatedYouTubeVideos_API();
/* Do your configuration */ 
 $data = $RytvAPI->validateConfiguration( 
 array( 
 ‘relation’ => ‘postTitle’, 
 ‘max’ => ‘3’, 
 ‘width’ => 150, 
 ‘height’ => 150, 
 ‘lang’ => ‘en’, 
 ‘region’ => ‘de’, 
 ‘class’ => ‘left center inline bg-black’, 
 ‘preview’ => true 
 ) 
 );
/* Search YouTube. */ 
 $results = $RytvAPI->searchYouTube( $data );
/* Generate the unordered HTML list of videos according to the YouTube results and your configuration. */ 
 $html = $RytvAPI->displayResults( $results, $data );
echo $html; // Or do with it whatever you like 😉
}
</li>
</ul>

Ays Pro

<h3>WordPress Related Posts plugin</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://ays-pro.com/wordpress/advanced-related-posts" rel="nofollow ugc">Advanced Related Posts Premium</a></li>
</ul>
<iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KLgGXMGSUTs?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe>
The WordPress Related Posts plugin allows you to show a related posts list on your website after a post or via a widget. The plugin offers a range of features, including custom thumbnails, meta box settings, advanced styles, and more. The plugin is an essential tool to introduce your page visitors to other related content, boost site engagement, and increase pageviews. Furthermore, it allows you to fully customize your contextual related posts list without any need for tech skills.
To activate the tool, select the post types after which you would like to display related posts. You can enable it for all post types or exclude some according to categories and IDs. Besides, you can decide the post relation type and the way of ordering the contextual related posts list. It’s possible to show excerpts of articles and give their length by characters or words. Last but not least, the plugin has a related post widget that enables you to show related articles in the most preferred place on your site. We have made sure that you can control your related post widget settings right inside the plugin for your convenience.
What makes us different? The plugin is developed by professionals who have placed special importance on quality and customer satisfaction. With its intuitive interface, you don’t have to spend time getting acquainted with the functionality. Get straight to optimizing the tool to your preference and reach expected results. Allow your visitors to discover the amazing content on your page by displaying related content under articles.
<h4>RELATED POSTS PLUGIN KEY FEATURES</h4>
<ul>
<li>Enable for all post types: Choose to display related articles regardless of the post type. By enabling the option, you cannot exclude similar articles for some categories or post IDs.</li>
<li>Enable for selected post types: It’s up to you to decide under which post types to show related content.</li>
<li>Exclude for categories and/or post IDs: Just enter the category name(s) and/or post ID(s) for exclusion. This way, you don’t display similar articles under the articles that belong to the mentioned categories or have those IDs.</li>
<li>Count of similar posts: You can decide the number of linked posts that should be displayed yourself.</li>
<li>Display on the front page: Similar articles can also be visible on the home page if you enable the corresponding option.</li>
<li>Display order results: The order of similar posts can be based on one of the following.</li>
<li>Default: Similar articles will be listed according to the filtration that has taken place. No other changes will be made.</li>
<li>Date: The ordering is done according to when articles were created. According to what you choose, the oldest or the most recent posts will appear on the list.</li>
<li>Title: Items will be shown in an ascending or descending alphabetical order.</li>
<li>Show meta box: The meta box that appeared under a post on the Dashboard will allow you to give central control to the filtration of the articles. Changes made inside a meta box are higher in priority and thus are more powerful.</li>
<li>Limit post title length: You can shorten the titles of linked posts by entering a character or word count.</li>
<li>Show post excerpt: Lastly, you can show parts of popular posts and decide their length by entering a character or word count.</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://ays-pro.com/wordpress/advanced-related-posts" rel="nofollow ugc">Pro Features</a>
<ul>
<li>Contextual related posts</li>
<li>Display related posts on popup</li>
<li>Display Custom HTML between the post title and post description</li>
<li>Add to Cart button for the WooCommerce products </li>
</ul>
<h4>SIMILAR POSTS RELEVANCE</h4>
The Related Posts plugin for WordPress does all the hard work for you. It filters articles according to some options that you have chosen inside the plugin. The options that are responsible for filtration are on the Relevance tab. Let’s get acquainted with them.
With the Order post query option, there are three ways you can filter your related content: by relevance, randomly, or by date. If chosen by relevance, the most trendy and popular posts will appear as similar articles. In the case of randomly, there’s no specified way of filtration, and random items will appear on your thumbnail-rich related posts list. Lastly, choose by date so that the system chooses the most recent posts, then proceeds with the older ones.
The Only from the same option helps you decide whether to display related posts with the same type, tag, and/or format as the current article. You can select more than one of the presented ways for the similar articles list. You can also choose to display same category posts.
With the Strongness of matching option, decide the way to filter your articles. The filtration can take place in one of the following ways. 
– Gradually weakening: The system will consider all the options that are responsible for filtering and do the work. Imagine that you have ticked all the four suboptions of the Only from the same option and have defined the count of linked posts as ten. In this case, the system will first take the items that correspond to all those four suboptions. Then, if the number of articles is not enough, the system will ignore the last suboption (post format), then the second to last one (post tag), and continue the same way unless there are ten same category posts. 
– And: It is a strict condition, and only those items that completely correspond to the chosen ways of filtration will be selected. Again, if you have ticked all the four suboptions of the Only from the same option and have also enabled the Limit to the same author option, the system will only take the articles that correspond to what you have chosen. Even if the numbers of found items (for instance, six) and the one that you predefined (ten) don’t correspond, it won’t matter: only six similar articles will be displayed. 
– Or: It is a milder condition compared with the previous ones. It suggests that the system will first take the items corresponding to the options and suboptions you have enabled. But to find the remaining number of articles, it will then consider only one suboption and start to filter articles according to it. Afterwards, the system will pick another suboption for filtration unless there are as many articles as you wish to display.
The Limit to the same author option allows you to show just the same author’s works as related.
Lastly, the Display only posts from the past option refers to those similar articles that should be displayed. You need to specify the period of time so that filtration can take place within it. For instance, if you enter 12 in the field and choose Days, only the articles that have been created during the last 12 days will be visible.
<h4>ADVANCED STYLES</h4>
The Related Posts plugin for WordPress allows you to customize the design of your related content the way you wish to. Pick one of the layouts, a text color, and thumbnail size. The thumbnail usually takes the first image inside the post. Yet, you can upload a default image for the thumbnail yourself. The plugin also enables you to write your own Custom CSS code.
<h4>RESPONSIVE DESIGN</h4>
As the WordPress Related Posts plugin supports responsive design, your thumbnail-rich related posts list can be visible on any device – mobile phones, tablets, and so forth. The layout of related content won’t suffer, as it’s adjusted to different screen sizes. As the number of mobile users is on the rise, we have made sure our plugin helps you increase pageviews and traffic.
<h4>EASY TO USE</h4>
The user interface of the plugin is very easy to navigate through, making it suitable both for beginners and developers. Besides, tooltips will come for help while trying to figure out what an option is for.
<h4>CONTACT US</h4>
Do you still have queries about the WordPress Related Posts plugin that haven’t been answered here? Feel free to contact us via the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/advanced-related-posts/" rel="ugc">free Support Forum</a>. Our customer care specialist will give comprehensive answers to your questions within a workday.
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Advanced Related Posts

This plugin allows you to display related posts with widget or under the post with advanced options.

Related YouTube Videos vs Advanced Related Posts