Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails – WordPress plugin Free download
Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails
Description
List the most recent posts with post titles, thumbnails, excerpts, authors, categories, dates and more!
The plugin is available in English, German (Deutsch), Persian (فارسی), Arabic (العربية), Polish (Polski) Russian (русский), Turkish (Türkçe), Japanese (日本語) and Greek (Ελληνικά).
Although the plugin is build only for widget areas users reported that it works also in Elementor. Whether it runs in other page builders is unknown. Please let me know in which page builder you were able to use the plugin successfully.
The plugin does not collect any personal data, so it is ready for EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance.
Lightweight, simple and effective
No huge widget with hundreds of options. This plugin is based on the well-known WordPress default widget ‘Recent Posts’ and extended to display more informations about the posts like e.g. thumbnails, excerpts and assigned categories. And it provides more options to build custom-taylored posts lists.
The thumbnails will be built from the featured image of a post or of the first image in the post content. If there is neither a featured image nor a content image then you can define a default thumbnail.
You can set the width and heigth of the thumbnails in the list. The thumbnails appear left-aligned to the post titles in left-to-right languages. In right-to-left languages they appear right-aligned.
What users wrote
Number 8 in 14 Plugins para Otimizar seu Site by Ideias Dig on November 8, 2018
“Truly EXCELLENT Plugin!” in the reviews by dnuttal on October 11, 2018
“BEST of its KIND!!!” in the reviews by shirtguy72 on June 3, 2018
“Easier than making an egg, seriously.” in the reviews by djackofall on October 2, 2017
“This plugin is INCREDIBLE” in the reviews by lucio7 on August 25, 2017
Number 16 in 20 WordPress Plugins Every Blogger Needs to Increase Engagement by Nocturnal Thrive on August 9, 2017
Widgets Users Will Love in 10 Ultra-Useful Free WordPress Widget Plugins by Eric Karkovack on June 16, 2017
listed in 20 WordPress Plugins that Steals Attention to Engage Visitors of Your Site by WP Team Support on March 6, 2017
listed in Most useful WordPress widget ready plugins by Themeidol on February 5, 2017
Number 1 in 8 essential WordPress widgets to supercharge your website by Rafay Ansari on January 31, 2017
“Excellent (after trying a few)!” in the reviews by giorgissimo on January 6, 2017
Number 3 in 4 Best Sticky Widget Plugins for WordPress Websites by Purushottam Kadam on November 4, 2016
What users filmed
Some users published video tutorials on YouTube:
Class 09 – Working with Plugins (Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails) by WordPress Learning Bangladesh on March 7, 2017
Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails Setup Tutorial – WordPress Lesson and Tip by Making a Website on April 17, 2016
Add Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnail – WordPress by eMediaCoach on August 15, 2015
Options you can set
Title of the widget
Number of listed posts
Open post links in new windows
Random order of posts
Hide current post in list
Show only sticky posts
Hide sticky posts
Keep sticky posts on top of the list if not hidden
Hide post title
Maximum length of post title
Show post author
Show post categories
Show post category names as links to their archives
Label for categories
Show post date
Show post excerpt
Show number of comments
Excerpt length
Signs after excerpt
Ignore post excerpt field as excerpt source (builds excerpts only from the post content)
Ignore post content as excerpt source (builds excerpts only from the excerpt fields)
Show posts of selected categories (or of all categories)
Show post thumbnail (featured image)
Registered thumbnail dimensions
Thumbnail width in px
Thumbnail height in px
Keep aspect ratio of thumbnails
Try to take the first post image as thumbnail
Only use the first post image as thumbnail
Use default thumbnail if no thumbnail is available
Default thumbnail URL
Print slugs of post categories in class attribute of LI elements
Print inline CSS instead of creating a CSS file
No CSS generation at all
Much more options available in the Pro version
If you want to build your special posts lists with additional options for layout, informations about each post and embedding via shortcode take a look at the plugin Ultimate Post List Pro.
Useful hints for developers: Supported Hooks
The plugin considers the output of actions hooked on:
widget_title
rpwwt_widget_posts_args
rpwwt_the_excerpt (for manual excerpts only)
the_excerpt (for all excerpts, is also applied after ‘rpwwt_the_excerpt’)
rpwwt_excerpt_more
rpwwt_excerpt_length
rpwwt_list_cats
Useful hints for developers: Available CSS Selectors
To design the list and its items you can use these CSS selectors:
The elements which contain the posts lists:
.rpwwt-widget
The lists which contain the list items:
.rpwwt-widget ul
All list items in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li
All list items of sticky posts in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li.rpwwt-sticky
All links in the lists; every link contains the image and the post title:
.rpwwt-widget ul li a
All images in the lists (use that to set the margins around images):
.rpwwt-widget ul li a img
All post titles in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li a span.rpwwt-post-title
All post author in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-author
All post categories in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-categories
All post dates in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-date
All post excerpts in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-excerpt
All numbers of comments in the lists:
.rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-comments-number
Languages
The user interface is available in
Arabic (العربية), kindly drawn up by Shadi AlZard
English
German (Deutsch)
Greek (Ελληνικά), kindly drawn up by Kostas Arvanitidis
Japanese (日本語), kindly drawn up by Kazuyuki Kumai
Persian (فارسی), kindly drawn up by Sajjad Panahi
Polish (Polski), kindly drawn up by Marcin Mikolajczyk
Russian (ру́сский), kindly drawn up by dmitriynn
Turkish (Türkçe), kindly drawn up by Mehmet HAKAN
Further translations are welcome. If you want to give in your translation please leave a notice in the plugin’s support forum.
Screenshots
Installation
Using The WordPress Dashboard
Navigate to the ‘Add New’ in the plugins dashboard
Search for ‘Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails’
Click ‘Install Now’
Activate the plugin on the Plugin dashboard
Go to ‘Appereance’ => ‘Widgets’ and select ‘Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails’
Uploading in WordPress Dashboard
Navigate to the ‘Add New’ in the plugins dashboard
Navigate to the ‘Upload’ area
Select recent-posts-widget-with-thumbnails.zip from your computer
Click ‘Install Now’
Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard
Go to ‘Appereance’ => ‘Widgets’ and select ‘Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails’
Using FTP
Click to Download recent-posts-widget-with-thumbnails.zip
Extract the recent-posts-widget-with-thumbnails directory to your computer
Upload the recent-posts-widget-with-thumbnails directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard
Go to ‘Appereance’ => ‘Widgets’ and select ‘Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails’
FAQ
What are the requirements for this plugin?
The WordPress version should be at least 2.9 to use featured images.
The theme should support wp_head() in the HTML header section to print the CSS code for a beautiful alignment of the thumbnails.
Can I set a default thumbnail?
Yes. Type in the web address of the thumbnail and click on “Save”. That’s all.
Can I set the width and height of the thumbnail?
Yes. You can enter the desired width and height of the thumbnails or select one of the sizes as set in ‘Settings’ > ‘Media’.
Can I change the alignment of the thumbnails in the list?
To keep the plugin lightweight: no. Please set the alignment in the CSS of your theme instead.
Where can I set the CSS of the list?
To keep the plugin lightweight: no. Please set the CSS in the Customizer at “Additional CSS”.
Can the plugin take the first image of a post as thumbnail image?
Yes. It works with images previously uploaded into the media library. You can select to prefer the first image to the featured image or to use the first image only.
How to keep HTML tags in the excerpts?
Use the “Excerpt” box below the editor on a post edit page in the backend. The plugin uses those user-defined excerpts unchanged “as is”.
If there is no text in the “Excerpt” box the plugin tries to build an excerpt via the post content. Since there is the “maximum length of the excerpt” option shortening the HTML content would lead to severe layout errors. So before shortening all HTML tags and shortcodes are removed.
Where is the *.pot file for translating the plugin in any language?
If you want to contribute a translation of the plugin in your language it would be great! You would find the *.pot file in the ‘languages’ directory of this plugin. If you would send the *.po file to me I would include it in the next release of the plugin.