Title: External Related Posts
Author: Gabriel Koen
Published: <strong>August 6, 2010</strong>
Last modified: March 14, 2012

---

Search plugins

![](https://ps.w.org/external-related-posts/assets/banner-772x250.jpg?rev=490763)

This plugin **hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress**.
It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when
used with more recent versions of WordPress.

![](https://s.w.org/plugins/geopattern-icon/external-related-posts_abada8.svg)

# External Related Posts

 By [Gabriel Koen](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mintindeed/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/external-related-posts.1.2.1.zip)

 * [Details](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/#installation)
 * [Development](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/external-related-posts/)

## Description

** This plugin now works! ** It broke shortly after I originally uploaded it last
year. People are still downloading it, so I decided to make it work. I revamped 
it and made it totally compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

External Related Posts takes the category, tags or custom taxonomy from your post(
or custom post type) and searches Google Blog Search for related posts. External
Related Posts then adds a link to that blog to your post and pings them, letting
them know you made a relevant post on their subject.

Controls exist for how many blogs to search for, whether to only post links to blogs
that accept pingbacks, how many pingbacks to perform, and a randomizer for how often
External Related Posts activates (e.g., every post, 50% of your posts, 25% of your
posts).

Github: https://github.com/mintindeed/external-related-posts

WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-related-posts/

Image by [Toban Black](http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/3773116901/); some
rights reserved. See link for details.

### Licence

External Related Posts is released under GPL v2.

## Screenshots

 * [[
 * External Related Posts options page.
 * [[
 * How External Related Posts might look on your blog.

## Installation

Extract the zip file and just drop the contents in the wp-content/plugins/ directory
of your WordPress installation and then activate the Plugin from Plugins page. Alternately,
use automatic installation from WordPress’s admin screens.

## FAQ

  The links I’m getting suck, they’re barely relevant at all.

External Related Posts uses either your post’s tags, categories, or title to search
for related blogs. Try changing your tags, categories or title — this will also 
change the results you get.

  External Related Posts isn’t working! My posts don’t have any links.

Not every post will return results. There are a few potential reasons for this:

 * Chance of running
    External Related Posts contains a setting that determines 
   how frequently it runs. If “Chance of running” is not 100%, then not every post
   will activate External Related Posts.
 * Use tags, categories, or a custom taxonomy
    External Related Posts uses either
   your post’s tags, categories, or custom taxonomy to search for related blogs.
   If you’re not getting many results, try changing which one you use.
 * Search criteria
    Try using different tags/categories/taxonomy term. For example,
   if External Related Posts is searching by tags, try changing which tags you’re
   using. Do your own manual Google Blog Search with your terms and see what results
   come up.
 * Verify blog is accepting pingbacks
    Not every blog accepts pingbacks. You may
   not get pingbacks, but you will get links.
 * Wait a few days and try again
    Google Blog Search is always indexing new posts.
   If you’re not getting any results, go back and re-publish your post at a later
   date and hope that someone has a post that matches your criteria.
 * Number of results
    In External Related Posts settings, increase the number of
   results to get from blog search. Note that this will increase the time it takes
   to publish your post.

  Why does it take so long to post articles now?

External Related Posts needs to fetch and process Google search results in order
to do its job.

  Why do I get a “Page not found” error when posting?

The script is either running out of memory or executing for too long.

This can be remedied in two ways:

 * Increase PHP’s `max_execution_time` and/or `memory_limit` in your php.ini, or
 * Reduce the “Number of links to make”

  How can I prevent External Related Posts from running on a given post?

Set “Chance of Running” to 0% until you want to use it again.

  How can I re-ping a given post?

Delete the previously added links (including the title added by External Related
Posts) from the post.

  Why don’t my pingbacks show up at the sites I’m pinging?

 * Blog owners may delete your pingbacks.
 * Blog owners may mark your pingbacks as spam.
 * If you’ve been spammy with pingbacks in the past, your new pingbacks might be
   marked as spam by anti-ping-spam plugins.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“External Related Posts” is open source software. The following people have contributed
to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ Gabriel Koen ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mintindeed/)

[Translate “External Related Posts” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/external-related-posts)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/external-related-posts/),
check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/external-related-posts/),
or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/external-related-posts/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/external-related-posts/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.2.1

 * Fixed incorrect screenshot. No plugin functionality was changed.

#### 1.2

 * Updated Google Blog Search URL
 * Made sure it works with WordPress 3.2
 * Support for custom taxonomies
 * Support for custom post types
 * No longer requires its own table, now stores its cache in the WordPress options
   table

#### 1.1

 * Final update
 * No changes
 * No longer supporting nor updating this plugin

#### 1.0

 * Initial release
 * Branched from PingCrawl

## Meta

 *  Version **1.2.1**
 *  Last updated **14 years ago**
 *  Active installations **10+**
 *  WordPress version ** 3.2 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **3.2.1**
 *  Language
 * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/)
 * Tags
 * [pingback](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/pingback/)[post](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/post/)
   [seo](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/seo/)[trackback](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/trackback/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://pcd.wordpress.org/plugins/external-related-posts/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Add my review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/external-related-posts/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/external-related-posts/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ Gabriel Koen ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mintindeed/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/external-related-posts/)