To make it greater, you should:

1) Expose the related posts query to filters, to allow customization:
Line Number 55:
[code]$q = "SELECT p.ID, p.post_title, p.post_content,p.post_excerpt, p.post_date, p.comment_count, count(t_r.object_id) as cnt FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy t_t, $wpdb->term_relationships t_r, $wpdb->posts p WHERE t_t.taxonomy ='post_tag' AND t_t.term_taxonomy_id = t_r.term_taxonomy_id AND t_r.object_id = p.ID AND (t_t.term_id IN ($taglist)) AND p.ID != $post->ID AND p.post_status = 'publish' AND p.post_date_gmt term_taxonomy t_t, $wpdb->term_relationships t_r, $wpdb->posts p WHERE t_t.taxonomy ='post_tag' AND t_t.term_taxonomy_id = t_r.term_taxonomy_id AND t_r.object_id = p.ID AND (t_t.term_id IN ($taglist)) AND p.ID != $post->ID AND p.post_status = 'publish' AND p.post_date_gmt < '$now' "; // leave blank space to avoid garbage!

$q = apply_filters('wp_related_posts_query', $q); // passes query to filters.

$q .= " GROUP BY t_r.object_id ORDER BY cnt DESC, p.post_date_gmt DESC $limitclause;";[/code]

2) Allow other plugins (like qTranslate) to parse correctly output:
Line number 135:

[code]
echo $output;
[/code]

change to:

[code]
echo __($output);
[/code]

font-family:’palatino linotype’,palatino,’times new roman’,times,serif;

and this just not change. i change the color and size of the font,
so i know im the correct area of the style sheet.

any ideas?

I’ve installed the plugin and it works just fine!

But I two small issues that I can not solve:

1) the settings page does not show a button to save changes, or a “ok” button. So, I can not confirm changes I want to make in the settings.

2) when I call the plugin in my sidebar, it works fine too, but the title of each post shown goes just one below each other, it is a mess. I should need an additional line break between posts listed. Any tips on how to add that?

Thanks in advance for any help!

So the anchor with the thumb gets a class “related_post_thumb” and the anchor with the text gets a class “related_post_link”. This would make it possible to add a background color to the text, but leave the image as it is. At the moment if you add a style to ‘.related_post a’ it applies it to both.

Is that possible? Thanks.

the process involves having a picture related to your post and using the posts “custom field” to display it. i also used the styling from Greg’s comment on this page.

create the thumbnail – -
you don’t necessarily need to create this thumb if you already have an image in your post, on the server. let’s say your post is about candy and you have a pic of a sucker on your blog, right click on it, view image. you’ll see the pic appear in a new window. copy the url.

custom field – - –
go into your Edit Posts page within WP and scroll down just a bit till you see a section called “Custom Fields”. you’ll see “name” and “value”.

Enter New.
Name = I used the word THUMBNAIL.
Value – paste the url from the step above.
hit the Add Custom Field button.

when it comes together, it looks pretty sweet! enjoy! it’s a very good plug-in!