Native Content Relationships

Description

WordPress does not provide a native way to model real relationships between content items such as posts, users, and terms.
Most solutions rely on post meta or taxonomies, which become difficult to query, scale, and maintain over time.

Native Content Relationships introduces a structured relationship layer for WordPress that allows you to define meaningful, queryable, and scalable relationships between content — without relying on hacks or editor-specific solutions.

This plugin is designed to be core-friendly, developer-focused, and future-proof.

What This Plugin Solves

• Many-to-many relationships between content
• Clean querying without meta or taxonomy abuse
• Long-term maintainability and portability
• Support for modern and headless WordPress setups

Key Features

• Relationships between posts, users, and terms
• One-way or bidirectional relationships
• Indexed database table for fast queries
• Clean PHP API for managing relationships
• WP_Query integration
• REST API support
• Multilingual-ready (WPML / Polylang)
• WooCommerce optional integration
• Editor- and theme-agnostic

Supported Relationship Types

• Post ↔ Post
• Post ↔ User
• Post ↔ Term
• User ↔ Post
• Term ↔ Post

Common Use Cases

Posts
• Products → Accessories
• Courses → Lessons
• Articles → Related content

Users
• Favorite posts
• Bookmarked content
• Multiple authors or contributors

Terms
• Featured categories
• Curated collections
• Semantic grouping beyond default taxonomies

Admin Interface

• Relationship management in post editor
• User profile relationship management
• Term editor relationship support
• AJAX-powered search for posts, users, and terms
• Modern UI matching WordPress admin style

Performance & Architecture

• Dedicated indexed database table
• No post meta or taxonomy hacks
• Optimized for large and multilingual sites
• Cache-friendly and shared-hosting safe
• Designed to scale to large datasets

Integrations

• WooCommerce (product relationships)
• WPML / Polylang (relationship mirroring)
• Elementor (dynamic content support)
• Gutenberg (related content block)
• Advanced Custom Fields (one-time migration tool)

Page Builder Integration

Elementor:
* Compatible with: Elementor 2.0+
* Features: Comprehensive Dynamic Tags suite for relationships
* Auto-detected: Yes (no configuration needed)
* Tested up to: Elementor 3.20

Elementor Dynamic Tags:
* Related Posts: Display related posts with customizable output formats
* Related Users: Display users with relationships (favorites, bookmarks, etc.)
* Related Terms: Display taxonomy terms with relationships
* Flexible Output: IDs, titles, links, avatars, count-only options
* Direction Support: Both outgoing and incoming relationships
* Native Controls: Relationship type selector with validation

Gutenberg:
* Compatible with: WordPress 5.0+ (Core)
* Features: “Related Content” block with relationship filtering
* Always available: Yes (core WordPress feature)
* Tested up to: WordPress 6.5

Shortcodes

Use these in posts, pages, or widgets. They use the current post ID when not specified.

Related posts (default: type=related_to, limit=5):
[naticore_related_posts type=”related_to” limit=”5″ order=”date” layout=”list” title=”Related Content” class=”my-class”]

Related users (default: type=authored_by):
[naticore_related_users type=”authored_by” limit=”10″ order=”name” layout=”list” title=”Authors”]

Related terms (default: type=categorized_as):
[naticore_related_terms type=”categorized_as” limit=”5″ order=”name” layout=”grid” title=”Categories”]

Attributes (all shortcodes):
* type – Relationship type slug (e.g. related_to, parent_of, authored_by, categorized_as)
* limit – Number of items (1–50), default 5
* order – Sort: date, title (posts) or name (users/terms)
* post_id – Post ID; omit to use current post
* layout – list or grid
* title – Heading text above the list (optional)
* class – Extra CSS class(es) for the wrapper
* show_thumbnail – 1 to show post thumbnail (posts shortcode only), default 0
* excerpt_length – Number of words for excerpt (0 = hide), default 0

Widget

Related Content (NCR) is available under Appearance → Widgets. Add it to any sidebar or widget area.

• Title – Optional widget title (leave blank to use the shortcode’s default “Related Content” heading)
• Relationship type – e.g. Related To, Parent Of, Depends On
• Number of items – 1–50
• Order by – Date or Title
• Post ID (optional) – Leave 0 to use the current post; set a post ID to show relations for a specific post

Output matches the shortcode (same markup and styles when the shortcode CSS is enqueued).

Developer Guide (Advanced)

This section is intended for developers who want programmatic control.

Core API

Add a relationship:
wp_add_relation( $from_id, $to_id, $type );

Get related items:
wp_get_related( $id, $type );

Check relationship:
wp_is_related( $from_id, $to_id, $type );

Remove relationship:
wp_remove_relation( $from_id, $to_id, $type );

WP_Query Integration

new WP_Query( array(
‘post_type’ => ‘post’,
‘content_relation’ => array(
‘post_id’ => 123,
‘type’ => ‘related_to’,
),
) );

REST API

Endpoints available under:
/wp-json/naticore/v1/

• Create relationships
• Fetch related content
• Delete relationships

Embed relations in core REST responses (headless):
Add ?naticore_relations=1 to any core resource request to include a naticore_relations array in the response. Works with:
• GET /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/<id>?naticore_relations=1
• GET /wp-json/wp/v2/users/<id>?naticore_relations=1
• GET /wp-json/wp/v2/categories/<id>?naticore_relations=1 (and other taxonomies)
Each relation item includes to_id, to_type, type, and optional title/display_name/name. Opt-in only so default requests stay fast.

Hooks & Filters

Actions:
• naticore_relation_added
• naticore_relation_removed
• naticore_after_duplicate_post – fired after copying relations from one post to another (args: from_post_id, to_post_id, result array)

Filters:
• naticore_relation_is_allowed
• naticore_get_related_args

Duplicate post: Use helper naticore_copy_relations( $from_post_id, $to_post_id, $relation_types = null ) to copy relationships when duplicating a post. Returns array with keys copied, skipped, errors. Out-of-the-box integration: Yoast Duplicate Post, Post Duplicator (metaphorcreations), Copy & Delete Posts (Inisev).

Elementor Integration

This plugin provides comprehensive Elementor Dynamic Tags for displaying relationships in Elementor-powered designs.

Available Dynamic Tags:

• Related Posts (ncr-related-posts)

  • Display posts related to the current post
  • Supports all post-to-post relationship types
  • Output formats: IDs, titles, links, count
  • Direction control: outgoing/incoming

• Related Users (ncr-related-users)

  • Display users with relationships to posts
  • Supports user relationship types (favorites, bookmarks, etc.)
  • Output formats: IDs, names, emails, avatars, profile links
  • Direction control: posts-to-users/users-to-posts

• Related Terms (ncr-related-terms)

  • Display taxonomy terms with relationships
  • Supports term relationship types (categories, tags, etc.)
  • Output formats: IDs, names, slugs, archive links
  • Direction control: posts-to-terms/terms-to-posts

Usage Examples:

Display related post IDs:
[ncr-related-posts relationship_type="related_to" output_format="ids" limit="5"]

Display user avatars:
[ncr-related-users relationship_type="favorite_posts" output_format="avatar_images" avatar_size="48"]

Display term links:
[ncr-related-terms relationship_type="categorized_as" output_format="term_links" limit="10"]

Get count of related items:
[ncr-related-posts relationship_type="related_to" output_format="count"]

Advanced Features:
– Context-aware: Automatically detects current post, user, or term context
– Fallback content: Display custom text when no relationships found
– Pagination support: Limit results for performance
– Ordering options: Sort by date, title, or random
– Multi-language: Works with WPML/Polylang translations

Integration Benefits:
– Native Elementor experience: Tags appear in Elementor’s Dynamic Tags panel
– No templates forced: Users control output format and styling
– Performance optimized: Uses cached relationship data
– Optional dependency: Only loads when Elementor is active

WP-CLI

• List relationships
• Add / remove relationships
• Integrity checks

Performance & Scale

Native Content Relationships is built for high-volume WordPress sites.

• Composite covering indexes for fast relationship lookups
• SQL-native validation logic for integrity checks
• Chunked processing to prevent memory spikes
• Streaming WP-CLI operations for large datasets
• Bounded memory usage (<5MB during full graph scans)

Benchmarks confirm stable performance with 1,000,000+ relationship rows under InnoDB.

View Full Performance Report

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.
GitHub: https://github.com/chetanupare/WP-Native-Content-Relationships

License

GPLv2 or later