How to Show Recommended Articles
How to Show Recommended Articles
SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base can display a recommended article near the bottom of each guide.
This gives visitors a useful next step after they finish reading and helps them continue through related documentation without returning to the main knowledge base page.
How recommended articles are selected
SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base first looks for another suitable published article from the same category.
For example, after reading:
How to Activate SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base
the recommended article may be:
Where to Find Your Purchase Email and Product Key
because both articles belong to the Licence and Subscription category.
If there is no suitable article in the same category, the plugin can use a recently updated article instead.
This prevents the recommendation area from appearing empty when a category contains only one guide.
Enable recommended articles
To enable the feature:
- Sign in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Open Knowledge Base > Settings.
- Select the Articles or Features tab.
- Find the Recommended Articles option.
- Enable it.
- Change the heading if required.
- Select Save Changes.
Open a published knowledge base article and scroll towards the bottom of the page to check the result.
Change the section heading
You can change the text shown above the recommendation.
Examples include:
- Recommended Article
- Read Next
- Continue Reading
- You May Also Find Useful
- Next Guide
- Suggested Reading
Use wording that clearly explains what the visitor can do next.
Read Next is a good choice when you want the section to feel simple and direct.
Where the recommendation appears
The recommended article normally appears near the end of the article page.
Depending on the other features enabled, it may appear close to:
- Helpful article feedback
- Social sharing buttons
- Related Articles
- The support help box
Check the full page after enabling it to make sure the bottom of the article does not feel overcrowded.
Recommended Articles vs Related Articles
These features are similar, but they are used differently.
Recommended Article
The recommended section normally highlights one article as the best next step.
It is useful when you want to guide the visitor towards a single follow-up article.
Related Articles
Related Articles normally show several guides connected to the current subject.
They give visitors a wider choice.
You can use both, although showing too many article links in the same area may feel repetitive.
Improve recommendations with clear categories
The quality of the recommendation depends heavily on how your articles are organised.
For better results:
- Assign each article to the most relevant category
- Avoid placing every article in several categories
- Keep unrelated subjects separate
- Use child categories when a category becomes too broad
- Publish more than one useful article in each category
A focused category is more likely to produce a sensible recommendation.
Example category structure
A Licence and Subscription category could contain:
- How to Activate SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base
- Where to Find Your Purchase Email and Product Key
- How Automatic Licence Checks Work
- How to Remove a Licence from a Website
- What Happens When a Licence Becomes Inactive?
Any of these articles could provide a useful next step from another article in the same category.
Avoid broad categories
A category called General may contain installation, design, analytics and licence articles.
This makes it harder for the plugin to choose a recommendation that feels closely related.
More focused categories could include:
- Getting Started
- Licence and Subscription
- Creating Content
- Customisation
- Analytics
- Troubleshooting
Clear organisation improves navigation, search results and recommended content.
What happens when only one article exists?
If the current article is the only published article in its category, there is no same-category article available to recommend.
SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base may then select a recently updated article from elsewhere in the knowledge base.
This gives the visitor another useful guide rather than leaving the section empty.
Recently updated fallback
The fallback recommendation is based on article modification dates.
An older article that was recently reviewed or improved may be selected ahead of a newer article that has not been updated recently.
Keep important guides accurate so the fallback content remains useful.
Avoid making meaningless edits purely to influence the recommendation.
Which articles can be recommended?
The plugin normally chooses from articles that are:
- Published
- Publicly available
- Not marked as unlisted
- Different from the article currently being viewed
Articles will normally be excluded when they are:
- Drafts
- Pending Review
- In the Trash
- Unlisted
- Unavailable because the licence is inactive
Unlisted articles
An unlisted article remains available through its direct URL, but it is not intended to be promoted throughout the knowledge base.
It should therefore not normally appear as a recommended article.
If a guide is missing from recommendations, open the article editor and check whether Unlisted Article has been enabled.
The current article is excluded
The article being viewed will not recommend itself.
If a category only contains the current article, the plugin must either use a fallback article or leave the recommendation unavailable.
Publishing another related article in the same category will usually improve the result.
Use clear article titles
The recommended section uses the article title, so the title should explain what the visitor will open.
Good examples include:
- How to Create a Knowledge Base Category
- How to Add an Icon to a Category
- How to Customise Knowledge Base Search
- How to View Search Analytics
Avoid vague titles such as:
- More Information
- Next Steps
- Extra Help
- Other Settings
The title should still make sense when shown outside its category page.
Add a useful excerpt
Depending on the layout, the recommended article may also display its excerpt.
A useful excerpt should briefly explain what the article covers.
For example:
Learn how to add, edit and organise categories in SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base.
Keep it to one or two short sentences.
Do not repeat the full article introduction.
Add an article icon or image
The recommended article may use the article’s saved icon, custom image or featured image, depending on the current design.
To add one:
- Open Knowledge Base > All Articles.
- Edit the article.
- Add an article icon, custom article image or featured image.
- Select Update.
Use a consistent image style across your documentation.
A mixture of photographs, line icons and unrelated illustrations can make recommendations look uneven.
Keep recommended content up to date
A recommendation can encourage visitors to open another guide, so make sure the selected articles remain accurate.
Regularly review:
- Installation instructions
- Licence guidance
- Setting names
- Screenshots
- Product version references
- Troubleshooting steps
- Links
An outdated recommendation can send visitors towards incorrect information.
Create a natural article journey
Recommended articles work best when your documentation follows a sensible order.
For example:
- What is SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base?
- System Requirements
- How to Install the Plugin
- How to Activate the Licence
- How to Set Up Your First Knowledge Base
- How to Create a Category
- How to Create an Article
Even though the plugin selects recommendations automatically, a well-planned category makes useful article journeys more likely.
Recommendations for troubleshooting articles
Troubleshooting categories can contain several different problems, so use specific article titles.
For example:
- Fix Licence Details Not Recognised
- Fix the Knowledge Base Page Returning a 404 Error
- Fix Search Returning No Results
- Fix Category Images Not Appearing
A visitor finishing one troubleshooting guide may find another issue-specific article useful.
Avoid too many end-of-article sections
The bottom of an article can quickly become crowded when several features are enabled.
You may have:
- Helpful feedback
- Social sharing
- Recommended Article
- Related Articles
- Help box
A simple order could be:
- Helpful feedback
- Recommended Article
- Help box
You could then keep Related Articles in the sidebar and social sharing only where it is genuinely useful.
Test the recommended article
After enabling the feature:
- Open a published article while signed out.
- Scroll to the recommendation section.
- Check the heading.
- Confirm the suggested article is different from the current one.
- Select the article.
- Make sure the link opens correctly.
- Test several articles from different categories.
- Check the layout on mobile.
Testing more than one category helps you see whether the recommendations are consistently useful.
The recommended section is not showing
If the section is missing, check that:
- Recommended Articles is enabled
- The settings were saved
- Another published article exists
- The current article is published
- Your SoftwareRoad Knowledge Base licence is active
- The website cache has been cleared
Try testing an article from a category containing at least two published guides.
The recommendation is not related
Open the current article and review its category assignment.
The article may:
- Be assigned to the wrong category
- Be assigned to several unrelated categories
- Belong to a category that is too broad
- Be the only article in its category
Correct the category assignment and update the article.
If no same-category article is available, the plugin may be showing a recently updated fallback instead.
The same recommendation appears often
This can happen when:
- Several categories contain only one article
- One article was updated more recently than the others
- There are very few published articles
- Many articles are marked as unlisted
- Category assignments are too broad
Publish more focused articles and organise them into suitable categories.
As the knowledge base grows, recommendations should become more varied.
The wrong image appears
Edit the recommended article and check:
- Article icon
- Custom article image
- Featured image
- Media Library selection
Remove or replace the incorrect image, update the article and clear the page cache.
The recommendation uses information from the article being suggested, not the article currently open.
The excerpt is missing
If the recommended card is designed to display an excerpt, check that one has been added manually.
To add it:
- Edit the recommended article.
- Find the Excerpt panel.
- Enter a short description.
- Select Update.
If no manual excerpt exists, the plugin may use automatically generated text or show no description, depending on the layout.
The link returns a 404 error
Check that the recommended article is published and its public URL works.
If it still returns a 404 error:
- Open Settings > Permalinks.
- Select Save Changes.
- Clear the website cache.
- Test the article again.
You do not normally need to change the permalink structure.
Changes are not appearing
After changing categories, titles or recommendation settings:
- Update the article.
- Select Save Changes in the plugin settings.
- Clear the WordPress cache.
- Clear any hosting or server cache.
- Open the article in a private browser window.
Recommendation sections are often cached with the rest of the article page.
Check recommendations on mobile
On a phone or tablet, make sure that:
- The heading is easy to read
- The recommended article title wraps neatly
- Images are not too large
- The card fits within the screen
- The link is easy to tap
- The section does not feel crowded
- It appears in a sensible place after the article
Short titles and excerpts normally work best on smaller screens.
Disable recommended articles
To remove the section:
- Open Knowledge Base > Settings.
- Select the relevant Articles or Features tab.
- Disable Recommended Articles.
- Select Save Changes.
- Clear the website cache if needed.
Disabling the feature does not affect the articles themselves.
Recommended article checklist
Before finishing, check that:
- Recommended Articles is enabled
- The section heading is clear
- Articles use focused categories
- The recommendation is different from the current article
- Unlisted articles are excluded
- Titles and excerpts are easy to understand
- Images use a consistent style
- Every link opens correctly
- Recommendations are not repeated excessively
- The article footer does not feel overcrowded
- The section works on desktop and mobile
Recommended Articles are now ready to give visitors a useful next step after they finish reading a guide.