Ariadne Related Posts – Smart Content Recommendations

Category-only plugins treat every post in a category as equally related. Ariadne scores each pair of posts on shared tags, categories, title words and text, so the closest matches come first. You can see the score for each match on the post's edit screen.

Yes. Related lists are stored with each post and read from that store when the page is built. Nothing is calculated during the page load, so it works with full-page caching, object caching and CDNs.

Deactivate the old plugin and activate Ariadne. It builds related lists for your published posts in the background, and the Dashboard shows its progress. If you placed the old plugin's shortcode by hand, replace it with [ariadne_related] or the block.

Not in the free version. Every signal (tags, categories, title overlap, and local BM25 text matching) is computed locally, with no external API calls, no account, and nothing to configure. Pro adds an optional AI-powered semantic-matching signal, which does call a third-party API (Voyage AI) using your own API key — entirely opt-in, and the plugin works fully without it.

Only in Pro. The free plugin counts nothing. In Pro, counting is on by default, and you can turn it off. When a visitor leaves a post, a small script (about 1 KB, loaded with defer) tells your own site that the post was read and how far down the visitor scrolled, in steps of 25%. It only counts visits that lasted at least 5 seconds, and it skips logged-in editors and obvious bots. Ariadne keeps daily totals per post, in a table in your own database, for 90 days by default; "Keep data for" (Settings → Popular) can change that. It sends nothing to any other service, sets no cookies, and stores no IP addresses or browser details. The counts rank Popular posts, appear on Post Status and Analytics, and break near-ties in related lists. To stop counting, untick Settings → Matching → Views. Ariadne also adds a suggested paragraph to WordPress's privacy policy guide (Settings → Privacy).

The free plugin counts nothing. Pro counts views and read depth (how far down the post the reader got, in steps of 25%). It also counts, for each related and popular list, how often it was seen, which cards were clicked, and whether the reader then read the post they clicked, and how far. Pro uses these counts for Popular posts and the Analytics screen. Only daily totals per post are stored, in your own database. There are no cookies, and no IP addresses or browser details (user agent) are stored. Nothing is sent to any other service. To link a click to the read that follows, the Pro script keeps one short note in that browser tab's session storage for up to 30 minutes, and deletes it once used. If you use a consent plugin that supports the WP Consent API, that note is only kept after the visitor allows statistics. In Pro, "Keep data for" (Settings → Popular) sets how long daily totals are kept: 30, 90, 180 or 365 days. After that, only month totals are kept. Turn off "Count clicks" there to stop counting lists and clicks.

Popular blocks, shortcodes and widgets you placed keep showing, with their saved settings and category styles. You can't change those settings until the licence is active again. New views and clicks are no longer counted. The counts you already have stay: Popular keeps ranking by them, and the Analytics screen stays readable and exportable.

No. Nothing is ever scored at page-render time. Every related-post list is precomputed in the background (in small, budgeted batches) and simply read from a cache when a page loads.

Yes — auto-insert after your content, or place it yourself anywhere with the [ariadne_related] shortcode, the Gutenberg block, or a widget. (Pro adds choosing the exact paragraph it lands after, and Pro+ adds boxes placed naturally inside the article body.)

Nothing is lost. Anything that depends on a Pro/Pro+ feature (custom styling, pinned posts, etc.) simply stops being applied while locked — the underlying data stays saved, and everything picks back up automatically if you upgrade again.