If you are an nRelate user, you’ve likely seen this message in your dashboard about the nRelate plugin no longer working after December 31, 2014.
Farewell from nRelate
Dear nRelate User —
As they say, all good things must come to an end. As of Wednesday December 31, 2014, the nRelate service will officially be switched off – forever. Please deactivate, and delete all nRelate plugins from your site before then, as they will no longer work. Thanks for the memories, the great content, and coming along for the ride. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. For more details, please visit our blog.
The nRelate Team
This is too bad, because I’ve really liked this plugin, and I have used it on a lot in themes for my clients. It was a great plugin that didn’t use the site database, nor did it slow down the site resources.
Granted, there are other plugins out there that you could just replace nRelate with, but you’ll want to do so with some caution. Mainly because a large majority of the plugins that produce related post thumbnails also come with a few side effects. Like filling up your database and slowing down your site.
Many hosting companies will ban those types of plugins.
I have two solutions for you to consider. The first, look into purchasing a premium plugin that offers a related posts thumbnail solution. Paying for a premium plugin ensures that you’ll have access to good support, will receive upgrades/updates from the developer, and when you invest in a plugin the developers can keep their business growing.
The second solution I propose is to have the related posts script hard coded into your theme and using custom coding to style it to match your site. This option frees up your site resources to be used elsewhere, and it doesn’t make a dent in your database. The added perk? If you don’t have a featured image for your posts, a custom image can be created to be displayed in its place. A custom image to also match your site. Have I convinced you that this is the way to go? 🙂
If the second option is something you might be interested in, I provide it as a paid service. Please contact me if you are interested in replacing your nRelate plugin with a hand-coded option (which is just better all-around for your site).
You can see it in action on my personal blog: http://www.justjulie.net/
Until next time!
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