Getting Started

First I needed to begin a new $wp_query with the settings below:

$term_slug = get_queried_object()->slug;
$wp_query = new WP_Query;
$args = array(
    // Related Topics based on the current topic
    'post_type'      => 'video',  // Video post type
    'post_status'    => 'publish', // Only check published posts
    'posts_per_page' => 10,       
    // Query the taxonomy
    'tax_query'      => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'topics', // Checks all the topics associated to the term
            'field'    => 'slug',
            'terms'    => $term_slug, // The term slug
        )
    )
);

Next I want to pass these $args and find the relational terms for each post containing my term slug.

To view our progress at this point, a print_r($related) will show an array of topics and the number of times it has appeared. Success! But not quite there yet.

$results = $wp_query->query( $args );

$related = array();

if( count( $results ) > 0 ) {
    foreach( $results as $result ) {
        $new_related = get_the_terms( $result->ID, 'topics' ); 
        if( is_array( $new_related ) ) {
            foreach( $new_related as $v ) {
                $name = $v->name;
                if( array_key_exists( $name, $related ) )
                    $related[$name]++; // Add to total if existing
                else
                    $related[$name] = 1; // Initialize if it does not exist
            }
        }
    }  
	
    arsort( $related, SORT_NUMERIC ); // Sort the array numerically
}

So next I need to do few things.

1. I want to sort the output into a list and make it pretty.
2. I only want to display 10 results.
3. Out of these 10 results, I do not want to show the topic of the page I am currently on.
4. If you did a print_r of the array, you’ll see that the output is not formatted for direct insertion into a URL, so I will need to remove the whitespace of this result and enter a hyphen for use again as a term slug. This is easily achieved with a str_replace and trim.

echo "<div class='related_topics'><h3><strong>Related</strong> Topics</h3>";

     echo "<ul>";

	ob_start(); // Grab $current_term from the echo
	  $current_term = single_term_title();
	  echo $current_term;
	  $redundant_term = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	
	$i = 0;  // Start at zero
	 foreach ($related as $key => $value)  {  // Get our pairs so we can grab the key
	  if ($key == $redundant_term) {  // If key is current term - skip it
		continue; }
	  if(++$i > 10) {
	        break; } // Break at 10 results
	
       // Remove whitespace and replace with hyphens for post slug
	 $clean = str_replace(' ','-',trim($key)); 
	 
     echo "<li><a href='"."/topics/". $clean ."'>$key</a>";  // Print out URL and regular version in a list
	
     echo "</li>";  }  
	
     echo "</ul>";
	
     echo "</div>";

Finishing Up

Since this was something I wanted to show in a custom sidebar of my taxonomy template, I opted for creating a custom plugin. I didn’t need any options with the plugin, just a quick solution, so I just wrapped it up in a function to do what I needed.

Here is the final result:

//Related Topics Function
function related_topics() {

$term_slug = get_queried_object()->slug;
$wp_query = new WP_Query;
$args = array(
    // Related Topics based on the current topic
    'post_type'      => 'video',  // Video post type
    'post_status'    => 'publish', // Only check published posts
    'posts_per_page' => 10,       
    // Query the taxonomy
    'tax_query'      => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'topics', // Checks all the topics associated to the term
            'field'    => 'slug',
            'terms'    => $term_slug, // The term slug
        )
    )
);

$results = $wp_query->query( $args );

$related = array();

if( count( $results ) > 0 ) {
    foreach( $results as $result ) {
        $new_related = get_the_terms( $result->ID, 'topics' ); 
        if( is_array( $new_related ) ) {
            foreach( $new_related as $v ) {
                $name = $v->name;
                if( array_key_exists( $name, $related ) )
                    $related[$name]++; // Add to total if existing
                else
                    $related[$name] = 1; // Initialize if it does not exist
            }
        }
    }  
	
    arsort( $related, SORT_NUMERIC ); // Sort the array numerically
}

echo "<div class='related_topics'><h3><strong>Related</strong> Topics</h3>";

     echo "<ul>";

	ob_start(); // Grab $current_term from the echo
	  $current_term = single_term_title();
	  echo $current_term;
	  $redundant_term = ob_get_contents();
	ob_end_clean();
	
	$i = 0;  // Start at zero
	 foreach ($related as $key => $value)  {  // Get our pairs so we can grab the key
	  if ($key == $redundant_term) {  // If key is current term - skip it
		continue; }
	  if(++$i > 10) {
	        break; } // Break at 10 results
	
       // Remove whitespace and replace with hyphens for post slug
	 $clean = str_replace(' ','-',trim($key)); 
	 
     echo "<li><a href='"."/topics/". $clean ."'>$key</a>";  // Print out URL and regular version in a list
	
     echo "</li>";  }  
	
     echo "</ul>";
	
     echo "</div>";
}

Here is the final plugin version tested on WordPress 3.4.1. Since I didn’t need an options page, you’ll need to edit the file with your own custom post type and taxonomy to make it work. Feel free to change it to suit your needs or expand upon it.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns (or criticisms) – leave a comment below.

Special thanks to M0R7IF3R over at WordPress Answers for his help pointing me in the right direction with this plugin.

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Honorable Mentions

More great Lipsum generators to spice up your designs:

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