Do you have a solid construction of categories on your blog? If so, you might not need a "Related Posts" section at all - you can just display latest posts from the same category.

In this post, we're going to go through the "More From This Category" section, an alternative to "Related Posts" (which we covered earlier).

Show You Have More to Say

If you keep your posts organized well with categories, you might find it useful to have a list of posts from the post's category.

"Related Posts" is not always the answer: If you have a website where the posts are separated with categories, a "Related Posts" section might "break" this separation.

For example, if you have a blog about different occupational groups, you can't show news about the textile sector as "Related News" under a post about informatics. A number of latest posts from the same category would be more relevant, right?

Creating a "More From This Category" List

As you may have guessed, listing latest posts from a post's category will be much easier than displaying related posts based on a post's tags. We just need to get the category of the post and list a number of posts from that category, excluding the post that the visitors have just read. The arguments that we can pass in the get_posts() function has everything we need.

<?php
// "More from This Category" list by Barış Ünver @ Wptuts+
function wptuts_more_from_cat( $title = "More From This Category:" ) {
    global $post;
    // We should get the first category of the post
    $categories = get_the_category( $post->ID );
    $first_cat = $categories[0]->cat_ID;
    // Let's start the $output by displaying the title and opening the <ul>
    $output = '<div id="more-from-cat"><h3>' . $title . '</h3>';
    // The arguments of the post list!
    $args = array(
        // It should be in the first category of our post:
        'category__in' => array( $first_cat ),
        // Our post should NOT be in the list:
        'post__not_in' => array( $post->ID ),
        // ...And it should fetch 5 posts - you can change this number if you like:
        'posts_per_page' => 5
    );
    // The get_posts() function
    $posts = get_posts( $args );
    if( $posts ) {
		$output .= '<ul>';
		// Let's start the loop!
		foreach( $posts as $post ) {
			setup_postdata( $post );
			$post_title = get_the_title();
			$permalink = get_permalink();
			$output .= '<li><a href="' . $permalink . '" title="' . esc_attr( $post_title ) . '">' . $post_title . '</a></li>';
		}
		$output .= '</ul>';
	} else {
		// If there are no posts, we should return something, too!
		$output .= '<p>Sorry, this category has just one post and you just read it!</p>';
	}
    // Let's close the <div> and return the $output:
    $output .= '</div>';
    return $output;
}
?>

Done! You can include this function inside your functions.php file (or save it as a separate plugin) and echo it (as <?php echo wptuts_more_from_cat( 'More From This Category:' ); ?>) anywhere you want inside your single.php file.

Conclusion

Yes, content may be "king" but a lonely king is a weak king, and people might not respect that "king".

Do you think there are more page elements that can help "the king"? Post your comments below - it's always important for you to share your thoughts with us!