One of my favourite plugins is the Related Posts plugin. However, then version I’ve been using hasn’t been updated for over a year so I decided to check the WordPress plugin site to see if some clever teenager somewhere has come up with an improved version.

Visiting the WordPress plugin site has made me realise it’s been a very long time since I installed a new WordPress plugin. I spent a few minutes on the site and here are the new plugins I’ve added/replaced:

Replaced My Old Related Posts Plugin with Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

I opted for this Related Posts plugin as I like that it bases the related posts on the actual post content, not the tags that have been chosen. A threshold can also be set for relevancy, so you get more related posts if there are more related posts and less if there are less. Brilliant.

The relevancy also seems to be improved. For instance with my old plugin these posts were returned:

• Would You Use The WP-Backlinks WordPress Plugin?
• Very Nice Wordpress Plugin - Themed Login
• When Was The Last Time You Upgraded Your Plugins?
• Are Google Blocking 3rd Party Translation Services?

And with the new plugin, the following posts:

• Upgrading To WordPress 2.3 This Weekend - Any Tips? (16.732)
• Useful WordPress Tweaks And Plugins (16.436)
• Top 30 WordPress Plugins (15.804)
• 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.3 (15.733)
• Great New Plugin - Simple Tagging (15.585)
• My First Week With WordPress: 10 Plugins That I Can’t Live Without (14.567)

The numbers in brackets are the relevancy of each post (only admins can see this - very useful). I think this list is much more useful as it contains posts talking about several plugins, like this post.

Removed Optimal Title plugin and replaced it with All in One SEO Plugin

All in One SEO Plugin does everything the Optimal Title plugin does and more, including better control of meta tags.

Replaced Spam Karma 2 With Akismet

I was stunned by how much Akismet has improved over the last 12 months. It’s sad that the author of SK2 is no longer developing it, but I can see his point, given that Akismet is distributed directly by WordPress.

Ajax Edit WordPress Comments Plugin

I spotted this plugin on Martin’s site and I will be adding it once my theme is finished (yes, I know it’s taking forever)

I’m sure there are other great WordPress plugins out there. Have you got any suggestions?