For years, now, ChurchMag and other blogs have been using a very popular related posts plugin. While historically many of these plugins shredded large databases and used too many server resources, solutions like nRelate came to the surface making a quick, easy, and lightweight solution for adding that cool and nifty “you may also like” related posts found after most every blog posts on the web these days.
Now Jetpack has added this feature to their robust, some might say bloated, WordPress plugin.
So which is better?
nRelate vs Jetpack Related Posts — FIGHT!
Round One
Instead of simply combing over the features, I thought we would use ChurchMag as a place to test this out. I am almost done with the ChurchMag redesign and the thought of shedding another plugin for a built-in Jetpack solution is really appealing.
Here’s what the current nRelate plugin renders on ChurchMag right now:
For the most part, I’ve found that nRelate showcases any internal blog posts that you link to, otherwise, it simple shows recent blog posts are posts that are similar in date.
Now, as I am writing this post, let me turn nRelate off and turn the Jetpack Related Posts module on and see how that looks.
And now that it’s activated and up and running:
If I like how it operates, I’ll look into some styling.
- Can I add more than three?
- How about the text?
- Am I stuck with “Related”?
I’ll answer these questions in an upcoming post, but first, let’s see how this new Jetpack module functions for the next week or so. These two screenshots are from the same blog posts and these two plugins are rendering completely different sets of related posts. This should be interesting to watch…
Blessing Mpofu says
i have wondered about this… curious about your findings…
Eric Dye says
Me, too!
John Wilkerson says
Interested in seeing what you discover. I use nRelate right now but if switching to the Jetpack option will a least speed up page rendering that’s enough to make me switch.
Eric Dye says
That’s a good question. I’ll have to watch that, too. I am really hoping that it will either be better or equal, since the thought of consolidating to one plugin is a nice one. 🙂
elementdave says
It might just be me, or the themes I have used in the past, but every time I have used Jetpack, it has broken something on my theme. I sometimes feel like it it too much and too heavy (bloated?) for me. I stopped trying to use it.
Eric Dye says
This is always why I turn-off modules I don’t use or need. As for themes, I find that Genesis/Studiopress actual styles for Jetpack and that 8BIT used to do the same. If Jetpack is breaking your theme, it may be the theme that’s having the issue — imho.
Brandon Kraft says
Thanks for giving Jetpack’s module a try. If you have any questions or run into anything that you aren’t able to figure out, please do drop me a note (via the email address left in the comment is fine).
Since Related Posts is a new feature, having feedback from site devs who want it to do something that isn’t covered in the Customize Related Posts doc is extremely helpful—allowing us either to add the documentation if it already can be done or giving us a real-world sense of what the community needs from the module.
Peace!
Eric Dye says
Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment!
As I am finalizing the new design for ChurchMag, the first thing I wanted to do was change the text at the top. I think most people would love to change the “Related” to something else without much effort. I’ve got some more thoughts, but I’ll wait to write about those in Round 2… 😉
Brandon Kraft says
Agreed. Currently, there isn’t a way to change this in the current JP 2.9.2 (unless doing something a bit extreme, like a custom localization since it is translatable).
In the development code for Jetpack, there is filter that will be released in the next major version of JP that will allow this to be changed with a quick line or two in functions.php/core functionality plugin.
In short, soon. 🙂
Eric Dye says
That’s awesome!
What’s the best place to watch/find the ability to make these kind of modifications upon release?
Mike Andrews says
I don’t have time to learn enough to be fixing breaking themes and plugins, so I generally find something that’s working and leave it alone. I couldn’t find a consistent ‘related’ plugin until I added the one in Jetpack recently. Aside from an updating glitch that caused all my plugins to deactivate, then disappear (which was pretty inconvenient), Jetpack’s related posts has worked well for me.
I was skeptical that the posts would actually be related, but for the most part they stay pretty true to whatever nuance of topic was going on in the post. Seems a little more intelligent than the nRelate plugin.
Eric Dye says
I agree and have had a similar experience and observation. Round two of this battle will be posted next week! 😀
adam says
Any update on this post? I’ve came here because I am trying to use jetpack related post on my genesis child theme. Unfortunately, it didn’t work despite deactivating all my other plugins and leaving jetpack active. Anyway, thanks for featuring nrelate in this post. I’m going to try it on my site if I won’t be able to make jetpack related post work in my site.
Eric Dye says
Yes! I just added the link to round two.
That’s odd that Jetpack isn’t working for you. Perhaps it’s time to update Genesis and Genesis child theme?