03 Oct 2011

Advanced Recent Posts Widget

Plugins 35 Comments

A light widget advanced version of the WordPress Recent Posts widget allowing increased customization to display recent posts from multiple categories or from custom post types.

Features:

* Display post thumbnails, with customizable size and automatic resizing using timthumb script.
* Display post excerpt, date, comment count, and more.
* Provides option to:
***show the post excerpt and how long the excerpt should be.
***show the post excerpt and how long the excerpt should be.
***show the post date.
***show read more link
***show the comment count.
***override the post order to order by; date, title, random, comment count etc.
***select multiple categories
***select custom post type
* Multiple widgets.

Installation

1. Download the plugin.

2. Upload it to the plugins folder of your blog.

3. Goto the Plugins section of the WordPress admin and activate the plugin.

4. Goto the Widget tab of the Presentation section and configure the widget.

5. Changing the CSS – If you need to configure the CSS style of Advanced Recent Posts Widget, you can copy the ‘advanced-recent-posts-widget.css’ file from the plugin directory to your theme’s directory and make your modifications there. This way, you won’t lose your changes when you update the plugin.

Frequently Asked Questions / Usage

screenshot faq Advanced Recent Posts Widget

1: Title

Default: Recent Posts

This field sets the title of the widget. It works the same as every other widget.

2: Sort by

Default: Date

Override the post order to order by; date, title, random, comment count

3: Reverse sort order (ascending)

Default: DESC

Change post sort order to ASC

4: Include post excerpt

Default: no

Displays the post excerpt of each post.

5: Excerpt length (in words)

Default: 5

Limits the numbers of words to display of each posts excerpt.

6: Include read more link in excerpt

Default: no

Include read more link in excerpt

7: Excerpt read more text

Default: Read more →

Set the read more link text

8: Include post date

Default: no

Include post date in posts

9: Show number of comments

Default: no

Include number of comments posts

10: Number of posts

Default: 5

Changes how many posts are displayed in the widget.

11: Show post thumbnail

Default: no

Displays the post thumbnails of each post.

12: Thumbnail dimensions

Default: 50 x 50

Sets the size of the post thumbnail in pixels.

13: Categories

Default: all

Sets the categories to display posts from.

14: Show Post Type

Default: post

Sets the post type / custom post type to display

Download Plugin

Advanced Recent Posts Widget

35 Responses to “Advanced Recent Posts Widget”

  1. Scott says:

    I just downloaded your plugin and everything looks great except I don’t see #11, #12 … on my widget there’s not an option to show post thumbnail.

    Any ideas ?

    Thanks … Scott

    • Safiweb Interactive says:

      Hey Scott,

      Thank you for downloading the plugin. The options are not showing because your current theme doesn’t support post thumbnails.

      Add this somewhere on your current theme functions.php:
      // This theme uses post thumbnails
      add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

  2. Carlos Lopez says:

    Hi,
    Is there a way to reference the thumbnails via custom fields. The auto size for the thumbnails is pulling from the featured image that does not look good as a thumbnail. I would like to set it if possible.
    thank you,

  3. Daily Tip: Customize Post Display with the Advanced Recent Posts Widget says:

    [...] out the plugin’s homepage for more information and full documentation. Download the Advanced Recent Posts Widget plugin from [...]

  4. Daily Tip: Customize Post Display with the Advanced Recent Posts Widget | SNS Online says:

    [...] out the plugin’s homepage for more information and full documentation. Download the Advanced Recent Posts Widget plugin from [...]

  5. Daily Tip: Customize Post Display with the Advanced Recent Posts Widget Cms NewsCms News says:

    [...] out the plugin’s homepage for more information and full documentation. Download the Advanced Recent Posts Widget plugin from [...]

  6. A Free wordpress newsletter » Daily Tip: Customize Post Display with the Advanced Recent Posts Widget says:

    [...] out the plugin’s homepage for more information and full documentation. Download the Advanced Recent Posts Widget plugin from [...]

  7. Daily Tip: Customize Post Display with the Advanced Recent Posts Widget says:

    [...] out the plugin’s homepage for more information and full documentation. Download the Advanced Recent Posts Widget plugin from [...]

  8. Acouphene says:

    Hi,
    Thanks for this plugin :-)
    I’ve got 2 problems :
    - Special characters (é, è, …) dont display correctly.
    - Thumbnails are not showing.
    Any idea ?

  9. Enrico says:

    Hi, thanks for your great job. I have a little problem with excerpt lenght, it doesn’t works with the famous Atahualpa 3.7.1 theme (with default theme it works). If you want, can you ceck the compatibility issue? You can download this theme at official wordpress directory.

  10. Enrico says:

    Thanks a lot. :)

  11. Jordan says:

    I would love to have my excerpt have the original formatting from the blog post. Is that possible?

    • Safiweb Interactive says:

      It’s possible by tweaking the css. Copy this css file wp-content/plugins/advanced-recent-posts-widget/css/advanced-recent-posts-widget.css to your current theme folder and you make your css changes/modifications.

  12. Sjoerd says:

    Hello, is it possible to get the date and title on one line?
    Now it displays the date below the title on a new line..

  13. Kyle says:

    Great plug-in, nice work! I am also having trouble getting the thumbnails to work. I’m developing locally at the moment, so I can’t share a log-in with you. My theme does support post thumbnails. Once published, the post shows up in the widget with the 50×50 box where the image thumbnail should be, but no image – like a broken referral link.

  14. Katie says:

    Great plugin, thank you! I’m having a problem with the alignment….the post titles are going outside of my sidebar. Any idea how I can edit that?

    Thank you!

    • Safiweb Interactive says:

      I think it’s a css issue…just checked http://www.kbkcommunications.com/blog/ and saw the issue. Go to wp-content/plugins/advanced-recent-posts-widget/css/ and copy advanced-recent-posts-widget.css to your current active theme your site is using. Then thereafter open the file and on line 26, add width:auto !important or simply in your style.css add.advanced_recent_posts_widget ul li {
      width: auto !important;
      }

  15. Daz says:

    Hi, I’m using your plugin, it’s great – but I can’t seem to get it to allow /**/ tags to work from post snippet. Any ideas?

  16. Dave Boyle says:

    Hi Scott – loving the plugin – a real help.

    One quick question – I’d rather not have the precent posts in a list – Can you tell me which bit of code I need to snip to remove this? I don’t wish to break the php file!

  17. Pete says:

    Hi. Thanks for the great widget!

    I’m in the process of creating a page on my blog that lists an amount of recent comments… this was made very easy with the use of your widget. So far everything works perfectly. What I want to do now is get the widget to list recent comments as well as their nested replies. I’ve also installed the WordPress Thread Comment plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-thread-comment/...

    Is there a way i can modify the code of your widget to also display the nested comment replies?

    Cheers!

  18. Pete says:

    Oops. Sorry, right question sent to the wrong people.

    Please ignore this question. Thanks!

  19. Natalia says:

    Hi,

    I downloaded the plug in and it doesnt show the thumnails. I also did this:

    Add this somewhere on your current theme functions.php:
    // This theme uses post thumbnails
    add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ );

    But still not working. help!

    Thanks!

    Natalia

  20. Natalia says:

    Nevermind. I read some other comments and got the problem fixed. I wasn’t using the feature image options.

    Thanks!

    Natalia

  21. dorothy says:

    Hi,
    Great plugin! just having a problem with showing the thumbnails and i’ve noticed above you said about the feature image options – i’m not quite sure where these options are… sorry i’m probably being a little thick! Can you point me in the right direction.
    Thank you!

    Dorothy

  22. dorothy says:

    Hi
    i found the feature image option – it was part of the wordpress options on the edit post page. So i made the image on the post a feature image and now i have the space where the thumbnail should be but no thumbnail… can you tell me where i’m going wrong.

    Thank you!
    Dorothy

  23. dorothy says:

    Hi there
    Thank you for your reply
    it’s http://www.dorothysulzmann.co.uk
    Thank you

Leave a Reply

Web Design Nairobi,Kenya Website Design, Website Design Kenya,Nairobi Website Design