I’ve been using nRelate Related Content and very satisfied with their feature. However, since last 6 posts it’s stop working. I don’t know why. But I figure that perhaps I should Re-index the plugin. Big mistake! Because as I hit the Re-index button and wait for 2 hours as they suggested…the plugin crashed. Meaning, it stays in the Re-indexing stage and doesn’t show anything on my front-end. So I submit a question at their forum while searching for another option.

Call me impatience, but I did find another plugin to use :). It’s called Microkid’s Related Posts. This plugin is different from nRelate because we have to manually configure which related to which. At some point it gave us better option and of course offer the reader better experience. But it can be overwhelming if we already have bunch of posts to deal with. Mine included. So I just configure up to latest 10 posts only. Maybe more if I have another spare time :p.

Another downer is that Microkid’s Related Posts doesn’t offer that much options like nRelate does. Whether it is in the admin area or styling area. By default, this plugin will show vertical list of related posts with or without thumbnail. Text is stationed next to the thumbnail. Not really my toast. So I did another tweak to their setting. First of all, I choose to manually implement the necessary PHP codes into my theme. I copy the code from their API page and paste it in my single.php file where I want related posts to show. This is the code I pasted:

Then I tweak the related posts css. I want it to line horizontally. Instead of adding another custom css, I just change default Microkid’s Related Posts css to my liking. This is what I came up with:

This code will make related posts to line up horizontally with caption underneath each thumbnail. Better option to resize the thumbnail is to go to your theme core as wordpress codex stated. I’m too lazy to do so :p. Hope this help you with Microkid’s Related Posts styling 🙂

UPDATE {Nov 21’12}

Ola, I finally got some time to edit this plugin’s thumbnail. Not really a hard job but I still kinda annoy that my function code won’t work as I want it to. However, I thought this one looks better than that bleary thumbnail images before. All I gotta do now is find where I did wrong to fix these thumbnail’s height. I want them to be uniform somehow..

Simple step I mention was this: add this code to your function.php. Don’t forget to name your new thumbnail size so we can call it later. Change sizes to your liking and input crop value as TRUE if you want your thumbnail to be exact like me. I currently has problem with this cropping feature but will try to figure it out later 🙂

After you put the code in your function.php, next you had to find the MRP (Microkid’s Related Posts) template to call that function. Go to Plugins section in your dashboard, click Editor section. Then follow this direction:  Select MRP from dropdown menu at right-top corner -> select -> microkids-related-posts/microkids-related-posts.php

Then change this part with your thumbnail-size’s name from function.php before..

That’s it! Simple rite 🙂