From many handful options Suggestion Toolkit WordPress plugin provides the standard for WordPress option – shortcode. We usually recommend other modern options to embed the widget into the articles and pages, like Gutenberg block, WordPress widget, or Elementor widget. However, we also provide old fashion shortcodes for the people who find it more convenient. Shot code provides absolutely the same functionality as other available widget options. So, let’s describe the functionality and parameters briefly.
[rel_posts keyword="plugin" num="post=3&product=3" align="left" exclude="617" width="50%" order="random"][/rel_posts]Here is a working example of the short code above:
Related Posts Short Code Parameters
keyword – search keyword or keywords that will help to generate the suggestions for the widget.
num – defined the number of certain types that had to be included in the suggestions. This parameter has an URL parameter notation. For example:
num="post=3&product=3"exclude – comma-separated list of post IDs that should not be included in suggestions. Posts can be of any enabled type.
include – comma separated list of post IDs that should be included into suggestions. Posts can be of any enabled type.
width – width of the block. Any of the css formats.
style – suggestion widget layout style. Possible values are:
- thumb-row – row layout with thumbnails
- thumb-column – column layout with thumbs
- txt-row – row layout text only
- txt-column – column layout text only
align – suggestion block alignment. Possible values are left, center, right.
order – order of the suggestions in a suggestion block. Possible values are:
- default – default order, suggestions as is
- random – random order of generated suggestions
- alpha_asc – alphabetical ascending order
- alpha_desc – alphabetical descending order
- date_asc – ascending order by publish date
- date_desc – descending order by publish date
show_date – post suggestions will display post publish date.
more – this option allows displaying the “More” button that will redirect visitors to the search page with the appropriate search parameters.
Post and Product Suggestions and WordPress Search Engines – Relevanssi, SearchWP, ElasticPress and Default Search Engine
Suggestion Toolkit WordPress plugin works quite well with default WordPress search. It implements quite good caching and should not slow down the website. However more powerful search plugins like Relevanssi, SearchWP, ElasticPress will work better. You should also take into consideration that specialized search plugins are often more configurable, flexible, and has much faster indexes. So, we highly recommend using our plugin with one of the specialized search engines/plugins.