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Changelog

Release notes for Ariadne Related Posts. Internal housekeeping and compliance-only changes are omitted.

v1.9.64

Changed

  • The plugin’s full name is now “Ariadne Related Posts – Smart Content Recommendations”. Settings and features are unchanged.

v1.9.63

Improved

  • A new glass look for the Dashboard, Settings and Post Status screens: frosted cards over soft color, pill tabs and round buttons. Everything works as before.
  • Better contrast in light and dark, and statuses are written out, not shown by color alone.

Added

  • An Auto / Light / Dark switch on those screens. Auto follows your admin colors, so it goes dark with a dark admin theme such as Mawu Dark Mode.
  • Card design, Up next and link settings are now on the Settings screen too, not only in the Customizer. Both screens edit the same settings and always agree.

v1.9.62

Improved

  • Up next always links to the best related match. The inline boxes and the Related Posts block share the rest of the list, so nothing shows twice.

Added

  • Up next “Phone style”: phones can show a floating card, like on desktop, instead of the full-width bar.
  • Up next “Glass see-through”: four levels, from Frosted to Extra clear. Text stays readable on every level.

v1.9.61

Added

  • Up next: a link to the next article that appears part-way through a post (you choose how far, or right away). A bar on phones, a small card on desktop, each with its own size, plus light or dark colors, an optional glass look, detail, search and accessibility options. Free; placement options are Pro.
  • Glass cards (Pro): a frosted text panel for the “text on image” card style, with a preset in the card style picker.

v1.9.60

Changed

  • Updated the Freemius SDK to the latest version.

v1.9.59

Improved

  • With Mawu Dark Mode active, Ariadne’s admin screens open in dark mode straight away, in your Mawu theme’s colors, instead of flashing white first. Your own light/dark choice still wins.
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v1.9.58

Added

  • A “text on the image” card style: the picture fills the card and the title sits on a soft fade over it.
  • A card style picker in the Customizer with a preview of each look. One click applies it.
  • A switch to pause background jobs, a daily limit for AI requests (Pro), and a Site Health check that tells you when the site’s background requests to itself are blocked.

Improved

  • A failing AI key or rate limit now backs off instead of retrying every few seconds, and the Dashboard shows the reason and recent errors.
  • Unpublished posts leave related lists straight away, cached pages refresh when their related list changes, and pages load faster with a smaller stylesheet.
  • The AI usage chart covers 90 days and shows token counts.

Fixed

  • The Numbered list style now shows the number beside the title.

Removed

  • “Copy settings from” in the Customizer; the style picker replaces it.

v1.9.57

Fixed

  • On Pro, editing a post now refreshes its AI match data. Before, once a site had more than about 300 posts, edited articles kept their original AI data and their related posts slowly went out of date.
  • Excluding an author or changing your matching rules now updates every existing related-post list, not just new ones.
  • The Dashboard no longer reports missing AI data as a problem on the Free plan or before a Voyage key is added. It now only shows what can actually run on your site.
  • The “Related Posts” heading now translates on non-English sites.
  • Turning on auto-insert works in a single save, and the Customizer’s live preview opens on a real post.

Improved

  • Sharper related-post images (properly sized, with responsive srcset), readable placeholder tiles, better text contrast, a visible keyboard focus outline, and cleaner screen reader output.

Changed

  • The plugin no longer adds a page-wide color-scheme tag to your pages. Developers can restore it with the ariadne_color_scheme_meta filter.

v1.9.56

Fixed

  • The two new “Related Posts” link-behavior options from 1.9.55 (nofollow, open in new tab) weren’t actually reachable without a Pro license, despite being intended as free. Now in their own always-available section.

v1.9.55

Added

  • A developer filter (ariadne_related_post_ids) so a theme or another plugin can see and adjust which related posts actually display, before they render.
  • Options to add rel="nofollow" to related-post links and to open them in a new tab, for both the Related Posts block and the Inline Related Post feature — free on every tier.

v1.9.54

Fixed

  • On some themes, the Related Posts card image (and the Inline Related Post’s image/label) could lose its intended sizing to a same-specificity theme style, depending on load order — most visibly, the card image falling back to a square shape and overlapping the title text below it. Confirmed compatible with WordPress 7.1.2.

v1.9.53

Fixed

  • Two related-posts scoring signals (local text matching and, on Pro, AI embeddings) were fetching more data per post than they needed during scoring, which showed up as slower saves on sites with a lot of content. A load test found this cut scoring time by roughly 85% and total per-post save time by roughly 70%. Also fixed: a small internal “keep the background queue moving” request was slowing down every post save by up to a couple of seconds; it now runs after the save has already finished instead of during it.

v1.9.52

Fixed

  • The readme’s description of what’s free vs. Pro misstated local BM25 text matching as a Pro feature; it’s always been free and local. No functional change — Pro remains the AI (Voyage) embedding signal on top of it.

v1.9.51

Fixed

  • A duplicate tooltip style rule from 1.9.49 was overriding the Settings page’s existing “Why is this locked?” tooltips; merged back into one consistent, corrected style. Also fixed a two-word System Health row name occasionally pushing its tooltip icon out of alignment when it wrapped to two lines.

v1.9.50

Changed

  • Clarified the “New Matches” row’s tooltip wording.

v1.9.49

Added

  • A “New Matches” row on the Dashboard’s System Health panel, showing when a newly-published post discovers a match with an older post and queues that older post for a refresh.

Changed

  • “Related Post Lists” renamed to “List Freshness” for clarity, and every System Health row’s explanation moved to a hover tooltip.

Removed

  • The “Background Processing” row, redundant with the page’s own Background Jobs section just below it.

v1.9.48

Added

  • An “Edge-to-edge image” option for the Inline Related Post card (Customizer → Inline Related Post → Image) — the thumbnail bleeds to the card’s own left edge instead of sitting inset. Only available for the Card and Bordered box styles with a Square image shape.

v1.9.47

Added

  • A setting (Settings → General) that’s the only thing controlling whether the Dashboard’s “Getting started” checklist shows — on by default, stays visible until you turn it off yourself, whether or not you’ve finished the steps.

v1.9.46

Added

  • A “Getting started” checklist on the Dashboard, shown to new sites until the essentials (reviewing the candidate pool, turning on auto-insert) are done — with a couple of optional next steps (post count, and for Pro, layout and AI matching) alongside.

v1.9.45

Added

  • A “Content priority” setting (Settings → General) for coexisting with another plugin that also inserts content right after your articles, like some ad-placement plugins — control which one’s content shows up first.

v1.9.44

Changed

  • “Posts to show” (how many related posts appear by default) is now a free setting, on the Settings page — previously it was only adjustable through the Customizer’s Pro section, with no free way to change the site-wide default at all.

v1.9.43

Improved

  • Each System Health row that tracks a genuine percent-complete metric now shows a small progress bar alongside the number, not just text.

Fixed

  • The Dashboard’s Refresh button now matches the Dark mode toggle’s style instead of falling back to a mismatched default look.

v1.9.42

Added

  • A “Cornerstone Posts” report on the Dashboard: how many posts are currently pinned to always appear as related content sitewide, and which ones, each linking straight to its edit screen (Pro).

Improved

  • The Dashboard’s usage chart now takes up more of the row it shares with the System Health panel, instead of an even split.

v1.9.38 · – 1.9.39

Changed

  • Some internal setting/option names were renamed for a WordPress.org requirement — this happens automatically on update, no action needed. One exception: if you ever placed the [arp_related] shortcode manually in a post, page, or theme template, update it to — the old tag will no longer work.

Fixed

  • If your license lapsed or downgraded, your related-posts card styling and any selected Google Font used to silently reset to plain defaults even though your configuration was still saved. Your own settings are honored correctly again, regardless of license status.

v1.9.34 · – 1.9.37

Fixed

  • Panels on the Dashboard, Settings, and Post Status screens could sit flush against the edge with no breathing room at narrow (mobile) widths.

v1.9.33

Added

  • Post Status now has a combined Status column (Healthy / Needs update / Missing summary / Not using AI) and one-click filter shortcuts for the common cases, instead of building a filter combination by hand.

v1.9.32

Fixed

  • Several mobile-width layout issues on the Dashboard, Settings, and Post Status screens, including System Health rows that could overflow instead of wrapping on narrow screens.

v1.9.31

Fixed

  • The Dashboard’s Quick Settings cards for Related Posts and Inline Related Posts could link to a Customizer section that doesn’t exist on your current plan — a dead end. A locked card now shows the tier it needs and links to the upgrade page instead.

Improved

  • Dark mode’s card borders are now a soft highlight instead of a solid line, so cards read as elevated surfaces rather than a grid of outlined boxes.

v1.9.29 · – 1.9.30

Improved

  • The Dashboard was redesigned around what actually needs your attention (health, usage, background activity, configuration) instead of repeating the same AI-summary number across several cards.

v1.9.26 · – 1.9.28

Changed

  • Choosing who can view Dashboard and Post Status reports is now a free setting on every tier, not just Pro+.
  • The Customizer’s Custom CSS field was removed in favor of WordPress’s own built-in Additional CSS, which does the same job without a plugin hosting its own CSS editor.

v1.9.25

Fixed

  • Tag matching scored zero for anything besides blog posts (e.g., WooCommerce Products), since it only checked one taxonomy. Now works correctly across content types.
  • A background job could get stuck showing “Running…” indefinitely with no way to restart it manually.

v1.9.15

Improved

  • The Dashboard’s usage chart now shows how many AI-matching API calls your site is actually making over time, instead of repeating the AI-summary coverage numbers already shown elsewhere on the same page.

v1.9.14

Fixed

  • Saving Settings from any tab — not just AI & API — could silently clear your saved AI-matching API key, even when you were only changing an unrelated setting. The key now correctly survives a save from any tab. If your key was cleared before updating, you’ll need to re-enter it once.

v1.9.9 · – 1.9.12

Added

  • “Exclude by author” (Settings → Matching) — posts by a chosen author are never suggested as related content, on any post, sitewide.
  • A hover tooltip on each related post’s match score, in the post editor, showing exactly why it was picked — the breakdown by tag, title, body-text, and category match.

v1.8.2

Improved

  • Background AI-matching updates are dramatically faster: a batch that used to take about 40 seconds now finishes in a couple of seconds. Related-post scoring is also noticeably quicker on larger sites.

Fixed

  • Posts scored automatically by the background process could occasionally miss out on full text-matching quality that manually-saved posts always got. Now consistent for every post.

v1.8.1

Fixed

  • Posts that tied on a matching signal (e.g., sharing exactly one tag with another post) were incorrectly scored as if they had no match at all on that signal, instead of getting credit for the match. Related-post rankings are now more accurate as a result.

v1.7.0

Added

  • Named position presets (Right under the title / Right under the featured image / After the 2nd paragraph / After the content) for easier control over where the related-posts block appears.

Fixed

  • Manually placing the related-posts shortcode or block in a post, with auto-insert also turned on, could show the block twice on the same page. Now shows once.

v1.6.9

Fixed

  • The block editor’s live preview of the Related Posts block didn’t reflect your actual saved styling (colors, fonts, layout) — now shows a true preview.

v1.6.8

Fixed

  • On list-style/countdown posts, some paragraphs were incorrectly skipped when placing inline related-post boxes mid-article.

v1.6.7

Added

  • Choose exactly which paragraph the related-posts block appears after, instead of only ever at the very end of a post.

v1.6.6

Added

  • Support for placing the related-posts block relative to any theme’s own ad slot, not just the plugin’s built-in SmartMag/Bunyad integration.

v1.6.5

Fixed

  • On certain themes, the related-posts block could fail to appear at all under specific ad-placement settings — now displays reliably.

v1.6.4

Added

  • Option to have the related-posts block wait for your theme’s own ad placement instead of always appearing immediately after the article.

v1.5.6

Security

  • The AI-matching API key is no longer exposed in the Settings page’s HTML source. Hardened the background-processing endpoint and admin security tokens.

v1.5.4

Added

  • Dark mode for the plugin’s Dashboard, Settings, and Post Status admin screens.

v1.5.2

Improved

  • Background jobs (matching updates, AI embedding calculations) now reliably keep processing on their own, even on low-traffic sites that rarely get visited — previously a job could stall for over an hour waiting on site traffic to nudge it along.

v1.5.0

Added

  • Support for showing related content on WooCommerce products (and other content types beyond blog posts).
  • Configurable candidate pool — control which posts are eligible to be matched (by category, tag, or post type) instead of a fixed rule.
  • Category is now a real matching signal, not just a filter — shared categories genuinely affect ranking, not just eligibility.
  • Optional pre-publish check — an editor can be prompted to generate a related-posts list before publishing a new post.
  • Editors (not just Administrators) can now view related-posts reports.

v1.4.1

Improved

  • Redesigned the Dashboard, Settings, and Post Status admin screens: clearer progress indicators, a usage chart, and one-click controls for background jobs.

v1.2.0

Renamed

  • This plugin is now Ariadne Related Posts (previously Echo Related Post). Existing installs upgrade automatically, with all settings and data carried over — no re-setup, no lost data.

v1.1.0

Added

  • Bulk actions on the Post Status page — recompute matching or AI embeddings for multiple posts at once.
  • Export all related-posts data as a downloadable JSON file.

v1.0.0 · First stable release

Added

  • Cornerstone Posts: mark your best content to keep showing up as related, sitewide, regardless of category.
  • A classic (non-block) widget for sidebar/footer placement, alongside the existing shortcode and Gutenberg block.