The related articles block is a block which can be placed on articles which will show up to 3 other articles that are similar.
Articles are related to each other by categories and tags they have in common. There is a scoring system to help determine if some content is more related than another. The more you describe content with categories and tags, the easier it is to find content that is related to it. The way this function works and the scoring is important so that the articles displayed are of a similar content or subject.
Here's how this module works currently:
Categories are weighted higher than tags. For example, articles that share two categories is more related than articles that share two tags. Articles that share categories AND tags are more related than articles that just share categories.
Users have the ability to exclude categories and tags from the related function. Some sites, like /Today, use terms to feed articles into blocks throughout the site and then these terms are excluded as they are not used to describe the article content.
The first query takes the categories and tags for the current article and looks to see if there are other articles that also have those same terms. The more terms it has in common, the higher the related score.
If 3 articles haven't been found yet, the second query is used, but this only looks at categories of the current article and tries to find articles with similar categories. The more categories in common, the higher the score.
If there still aren't 3 articles, the last query is used which only looks at tags and tries to find articles with similar tags. The more tags in common, the higher the score.
Hopefully by this point 3 articles have been found. The articles are displayed in a row sorted by most related to least related, and date (if multiple articles had the same related score, most recent would be displayed first).
Editors need the ability to place this block on article pages. It should not be considered part of the article content however.
The related articles block is a block which can be placed on articles which will show up to 3 other articles that are similar.
Articles are related to each other by categories and tags they have in common. There is a scoring system to help determine if some content is more related than another. The more you describe content with categories and tags, the easier it is to find content that is related to it. The way this function works and the scoring is important so that the articles displayed are of a similar content or subject.
Here's how this module works currently:
This feature is used on /Today and /Coloradan.