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>

WebberZone

Ajay

<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/contextual-related-posts/" rel="ugc">Contextual Related Posts</a> is a powerful WordPress plugin that displays fast, intelligent related posts to keep users on your site longer. Improve SEO, increase pageviews, and lower bounce rates — no setup needed.
<h3>Key features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Activate and Forget: Activate the plugin. Contextual Related Posts automatically displays related posts on your site and in your feed after the content. There is no need to edit any template files.</li>
<li>Custom Control with Manual Install: Want placement control? You have multiple options available:
<ul>
<li>Gutenberg / Block Editor support: You can easily add a “Related Posts [CRP]” block to any post or page with its options and settings.</li>
<li>Widgets: Add related posts to any widgetized theme area, such as the sidebar or footer. You can configure the widget options to suit your needs.</li>
<li>Shortcode: Use <code>[crp]</code> to display the related posts anywhere within the post content.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>REST API: Fetch related posts for any post ID using <code>contextual-related-posts/v1/posts/<id>/</code>. You can also use query parameters to filter or sort the results.</li>
<li>The algorithm: Find related posts based on the current post’s title and/or content. You can also find posts by tags, categories and selected custom fields.</li>
<li>Caching: Related posts output is automatically cached as visitors browse through your site, reducing the load on your server and improving performance.</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://demo.webberzone.com" rel="nofollow ugc">View Demo</a>
Contextual Related Posts uses an intelligent algorithm that analyzes your post’s title and/or content to find the most related ones. This way, you can show your visitors more awesome content and keep them on your site longer.
With Contextual Related Posts, you can quickly boost your site’s traffic, reduce bounce rates, and refresh old entries. It’s fast, flexible, and easy to use. Try it today and see the difference for yourself!
Additional features include:
<ul>
<li>Exclusions: Exclude posts from specific categories or tags from being displayed in the related posts list.</li>
<li>Custom post types: The related posts list supports posts, pages, attachments, or any other custom post type on your site.</li>
<li>Thumbnail support: Display thumbnails or not!</li>
<li>Styles: The output of the related posts list is wrapped in CSS classes that allow you to style it easily using custom CSS code.</li>
<li>Customizable output: Display post excerpts in the related posts list. Customize the HTML tags and attributes used to display the output.</li>
<li>Extendable code: Many filters and actions allow developers to easily add features, modify outputs, or integrate with other plugins.</li>
</ul>
<h3>MySQL FULLTEXT indices</h3>
On activation, the plugin creates three MySQL FULLTEXT indices (or indexes), which are leveraged to find the related posts. <a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-algorithm/" rel="nofollow ugc">Learn more about how the algorithm works</a>.
If you’re running a multisite installation, an index is created for each blog upon activation. These indices occupy space in your MySQL database but are essential for running the plugin.
Two options on the settings page allow you to remove these indices when deactivating or deleting the plugin. The latter is true by default.
<h3>💼 Features Exclusive to CRP Pro</h3>
<a href="https://webberzone.com/plugins/contextual-related-posts/pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">CRP Pro</a> supercharges your related posts with advanced customization, better performance, and powerful content strategy tools.
<h4>🚀 Performance Enhancements</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/efficient-content-storage-and-indexing/" rel="nofollow ugc">Efficient Content Storage and Indexing</a>: Speed up your site with optimized custom tables and efficient database indices for lightning-fast queries.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/caching-in-contextual-related-posts/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cache Setting</a>: Fine-tune your performance with configurable cache times from 1 hour to 1 year.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/server-load-threshold-setting-in-contextual-related-posts-pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">Server Load Threshold</a>: Prevent CRP from running queries when the database is under heavy load.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-bot-protection/" rel="nofollow ugc">Bot Protection</a>: Skip CRP processing for known bots and crawlers using an extensible signature list, saving server resources.</li>
</ul>
<h4>🎯 Smarter Content Matching</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-algorithm/" rel="nofollow ugc">Advanced Algorithm</a>: Control exactly how relevant content is found by adjusting weights for title, content, and excerpt.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-algorithm/#weighting-categories-tags-and-taxonomies" rel="nofollow ugc">Taxonomy Weight System</a>: Refine your matches with precise taxonomy weighting for perfect content relationships.</li>
</ul>
<h4>🛒 WooCommerce Integration</h4>
<ul>
<li>Related Products for WooCommerce: Seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce to show related products.</li>
<li>Product Matching & Filtering: Index SKUs and attributes, filter by stock status, and use category-based recommendations with native WooCommerce styling.</li>
<li>Display Customization: Toggle prices, ratings, and choose to replace or complement WooCommerce’s related products.</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/woocommerce-related-products/" rel="nofollow ugc">📖 WooCommerce Related Products Documentation</a>
<h3>WP-CLI Support</h3>
Contextual Related Posts Pro includes comprehensive WP-CLI commands for advanced management and automation. Perfect for developers, agencies, and site administrators who need powerful command-line tools.
Key WP-CLI Features:
<ul>
<li>Database Management: Migrate post meta, check index status, and manage database operations</li>
<li>Cache Control: Clear, warm, enable/disable cache with multisite support</li>
<li>Custom Table Operations: Sync content and manage FULLTEXT indexes for optimal performance</li>
<li>Content Processing: Reprocess posts and manage related content in bulk</li>
<li>Multisite Ready: All commands support <code>--network</code> flag for multisite installations</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-wp-cli/" rel="nofollow ugc">📖 Complete CLI Documentation</a>
<h4>🎨 Advanced Design & Display Options</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-blocks/" rel="nofollow ugc">Block Editor Integration</a>: Create beautiful layouts with the Query Loop Block and ready-to-use block patterns including Grid, Image with Title, and more.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-shortcode/" rel="nofollow ugc">Extra Shortcode Parameters</a>: Unlock additional customization options for complete control over your related posts display.</li>
</ul>
<h4>📊 Analytics & Content Strategy Tools</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/tracking-parameters/" rel="nofollow ugc">Tracking Parameters</a>: Measure content performance with automatic UTM tracking for all related post clicks.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/cornerstone-posts-in-contextual-related-posts/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cornerstone Posts</a>: Guide visitors to your most important content by featuring key articles in your related posts lists.</li>
<li><a href="https://webberzone.com/support/knowledgebase/contextual-related-posts-metabox/" rel="nofollow ugc">Additional Metabox Settings</a>: Control related content at the individual post level for perfect content relationships.</li>
</ul>
<h3>GDPR</h3>
Contextual Related Posts doesn’t collect personal data or send information to external services — making it GDPR-friendly by default.
⚠️ You’re responsible for ensuring your site’s overall GDPR compliance.
<h3>Donations</h3>
Love Contextual Related Posts? Help keep it alive!
You can <a href="https://wzn.io/donate-crp" rel="nofollow ugc">donate</a> or upgrade to <a href="https://webberzone.com/plugins/contextual-related-posts/pro/" rel="nofollow ugc">CRP Pro</a> — both help support development and support.
<h3>Contribute</h3>
Contextual Related Posts is also available on <a href="https://github.com/WebberZone/contextual-related-posts" rel="nofollow ugc">Github</a>. 
So, if you’ve got some cool feature you’d like to implement into the plugin or a bug you’ve been able to fix, consider forking the project and sending me a pull request.
Bug reports are <a href="https://github.com/WebberZone/contextual-related-posts/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">welcomed on Github</a>. Please note Github is not a support forum, and issues that aren’t suitably qualified as bugs will be closed.
<h3>Translations</h3>
Contextual Related Posts is available for <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/contextual-related-posts" rel="nofollow ugc">translation directly on WordPress.org</a>. Check out the official <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/rosetta/theme-plugin-directories/" rel="nofollow ugc">Translator Handbook</a> to contribute.
<h3>Other Plugins by WebberZone</h3>
Contextual Related Posts is one of the many plugins developed by WebberZone. Check out our other plugins:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/top-10/" rel="ugc">Top 10</a> – Track daily and total visits to your blog posts and display the popular and trending posts</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-to-all/" rel="ugc">WebberZone Snippetz</a> – The ultimate snippet manager for WordPress to create and manage custom HTML, CSS or JS code snippets</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/knowledgebase/" rel="ugc">Knowledge Base</a> – Create a knowledge base or FAQ section on your WordPress site</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search/" rel="ugc">Better Search</a> – Enhance the default WordPress search with contextual results sorted by relevance</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoclose/" rel="ugc">Auto-Close</a> – Automatically close comments, pingbacks and trackbacks and manage revisions</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/popular-authors/" rel="ugc">Popular Authors</a> – Display popular authors in your WordPress widget</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/where-did-they-go-from-here/" rel="ugc">Followed Posts</a> – Show a list of related posts based on what your users have read</li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/webberzone-link-warnings/" rel="ugc">WebberZone Link Warnings</a> – Add accessible warnings for external links and target=”_blank” links</li>
</ul>

Contextual Related Posts


Great plugin. Yours is the best related posts plugin I've found, and I've tried a lot.



If I could request one feature, perhaps in the pro version, the ability to show only related posts within the same post type.


Great plugin


Runs locally on your server instead of calling out to a cloud service. Highly configurable, privacy-friendly, can show thumbnails or just titles, can cache results or calculate them on the fly. Comparable to YARPP, which is also good, but this one comes up with better results on my site.


Highly configurable, great matches

Keep visitors on your site longer with intelligent, fast-loading, contextually related posts. Block, shortcode, custom post type and widget ready.

Related YouTube Videos vs Contextual Related Posts