August 05, 2023

Smart Recent Posts Widget Plugin

Provides advanced recent posts widget,you can display it with thumbnails, excerpt, date, author, comment count and more.

Due to WordPress 5.8 major update for Widgets, if you want to use this plugin, you must use WordPress 5.8.x

Smart recent posts widget provides flexible and highly customizable recent posts widget. Allows you to display a list of the most recent posts with thumbnail, excerpt, date, author, comment count also you can display it from all or specific or multiple categories or tags, post types and much more!

Install, Activate, Done!

Using the widget is super easy with clear inline information. It provides a lot of options to fit your needs, need more option? Please ask on Support forum.

Features Include

Style: Choose 3 different posts list style
Open link in new tab
Show/hide post title
Allow you to set title url
Selected or multiple post types
Selected or multiple categories
Selected or multiple tags
Include or Exclude Categories
Post status
Custom html or text before and/or after recent posts
Orderby date, comment count, random, and more
Display thumbnails
Display excerpt, with customizable length.
Display post date
Display modification date
Display comment count
Display post author
Exclude current post
Custom CSS
Multiple widgets

Support this project

Style Explanation

There are 3 style you can choose:

Default
Classic
Modern

Default
This is just a basic style, the posts list style follow your theme stylesheet.

Classic
Classic style is a basic style with some little improvement, it adds a nice border bottom to each list to seperate them and change the font color and size of the post meta and excerpt. This style works with whatever setting you choose, either small thumbnail or big thumbnail with centered position.

Modern
Modern style adds a nice opacity to the thumbnail and display the title on the corner of the thumbnail. This style only works perfectly with some condition, if you want to get the best result please follow below steps:

Switch the Thumbnail Size to medium
Only display the title, please uncheck another data such as date, comment count, author, etc.
Remove everything inside the Custom CSS box.
Switch the Style option to Modern
Done!

Please open the Screenshot tab above to see the style design.

Installation

Through Dashboard

Log in to your WordPress admin panel and go to Plugins -> Add New
Type smart recent posts widget in the search box and click on search button.
Find Smart Recent Posts Widget plugin.
Then click on Install Now after that activate the plugin.
Go to the widgets page Appearance -> Widgets.
Find Smart Recent Posts widget.

Installing Via FTP

Download the plugin to your hardisk.
Unzip.
Upload the smart-recent-posts-widget folder into your plugins directory.
Log in to your WordPress admin panel and click the Plugins menu.
Then activate the plugin.
Go to the widgets page Appearance -> Widgets.
Find Smart Recent Posts widget.

Screenshots

Modern style, tested with default theme Twenty Sixteen
Classic style
Default style
Widget settings

FAQ

How to filter the post query?

You can use srpw_default_query_arguments to filter it. Example:

add_filter( 'srpw_default_query_arguments', 'your_custom_function' ); function your_custom_function( $args ) { $args['posts_per_page'] = 10; // Changing the number of posts to show. return $args; }

How to filter the post excerpt?

Post excerpt now comes with filter to easily dev to change/customize it. apply_filters( 'srpw_excerpt', get_the_excerpt() )

Ordering not working!

Did you installed any Post or Post Type Order? Please try to deactivate it and try again the ordering.

No image options

Your theme needs to support Post Thumbnail, please go to https://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Thumbnails to read more info and how to activate it in your theme.

Available filters

Default arguments

srpw_default_args

Post excerpt

srpw_excerpt

Post markup

srpw_markup

Post query arguments

srpw_default_query_arguments

Changelog

Due to WordPress 5.8 major update for Widgets, if you want to (continue) use this plugin, you must use WordPress 5.8.x

1.0.2

Fix post status issue.
Support WordPress 5.8