Native Content Relationships

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.

If you’ve outgrown ACF relationship fields or post meta arrays, 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, built specifically for developers who have hit performance walls.

What This Plugin Solves

• Many-to-many relationships between content • Clean querying without meta or taxonomy abuse • Long-term maintainability and portability • Cleanly handles headless and REST 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 with inline relations • 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

Stability & Backward Compatibility

Schema stable from 1.x onward. Backward compatibility guaranteed.

We lock the core before expanding. Ecosystem and agency confidence depend on it.

• Database schema stability — The relationship table and NCR_SCHEMA_VERSION are stable in the 1.x line. Any future schema change will be additive (new columns/indexes) or run through a documented migration; no breaking table or column renames without a major version.
• Backward compatibility promise — Public PHP APIs (functions, hooks, WP_Query arguments), shortcodes, and REST endpoints will not be removed or changed in breaking ways within the 1.x branch. Deprecations will be announced and supported for at least one minor version.
• Versioning policy — 1.x = stable core. Minor/patch releases may add features and fix bugs; they will not break existing integrations. A major version (2.x) would be the only place for intentional breaking changes, with a clear migration path.
• Namespacing discipline — One internal prefix: ncr_ (functions, hooks, options), NCR_ (classes, constants), ncr- (CSS/IDs/handles). No new alternate prefixes; documented and consistent so extensions and ecosystem plugins can rely on a stable surface.

Architected for Performance & Scale

Native Content Relationships is built for high-volume enterprise and headless WordPress sites. Forget the performance bottleneck of post-meta.

• Index Optimization: Built on composite covering indexes (type_lookup) and a smart query planner optimized for performance.
• Micro-Optimized Validations: SQL-native validations ensure sub-2ms P95 latency even at 1M+ rows.
• Object Cache Integration: Full compatibility with object cache through group isolation, targeted relationship cache invalidation, and bulk priming strategies.
• Performance Diagnostics: Includes a powerful CLI diagnostic utility to check and fix integrity without UI bloat.

Benchmarks confirm stable performance with 1,000,000+ relationship rows under InnoDB. View Full Performance Report

ACF Migration (Escape Meta Technical Debt)

If you store relationships in Advanced Custom Fields relationship fields or standard Post Meta, you can safely migrate to Native Content Relationships to unlock immediate performance and querying benefits.

A built-in script allows you to selectively migrate ACF related data into the new performant table, allowing you to gradually refactor out technical debt. Check out the dedicated one-time migration guide here: docs/migration/from-acf.md

Advanced Developer APIs

Built to be a complete content relationship modeling engine:

• Relationship Type Registration API: Programmatic type registration for custom relationships, with schema validation and strict directional logic.
• Relationship Constraints: Declare relationship constraints like 1:1, 1:N, or M:N and strictly enforce maximum capacities and duplicates.
• Advanced Query Parameters: Inject the content_relation argument directly into your WP_Query with parameters specifically designed for advanced use cases: include multiple relationship types, apply exclusionary rules, combine OR/AND relations, or filter by minimum/maximum thresholds.
• Bulk Operations API: Optimized batch operations to bulk attach, bulk detach, and WP-CLI data import designed specifically for use cases when scaling up and executing large workloads.
• Lightweight Metadata Add context to relationships natively using relationship metadata (allow order rankings, contexts, descriptions, tracking data, etc.) via a dedicated relationship metadata registry and table.
• Graph Utility Layer An ultra-minimal set of APIs and WP-CLI commands that generate graph diagnostics—useful for acquiring relationship counts, calculating the most connected posts, isolating orphaned items, and running background integrity checks.

Headless REST Readiness

For decoupled and highly dynamic solutions, Native Content Relationships includes powerful headless optimizations:

Append ?naticore_relations=1 or ?_embed=relations into your standard core endpoint fetches (e.g., wp/v2/posts) to embed related data inside your response arrays instantly, minimizing round trips.

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

Contributing

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

License

GPLv2 or later