WordPress is one of the most convenient platforms available for building a website. People look to hire WordPress developer rather than any other professional to get a virtual interface. A very user-friendly feature of the CMS allows people to display the latest content in the sidebar or other widget areas. The limited control options, though restrict the manner in which recent posts can be displayed. This affects the chances of increasing user-engagement by attracting them with fresh content.
The issue can be easily resolved by incorporating any of the following WordPress recent posts plugins on the website. Let’s take a look at the prominent features of all the plugins.
1. Recent Posts Widget Extended
One of the most popular plugins, Recent Posts Widget Extended is a versatile product. It allows people to display the latest content along with thumbnails, excerpts and post dates. People can set the limit of the visible excerpts and instead of the date, show the relative age of the post. The controls provided by the plugin lets users select the taxonomies form where to access the posts.
The flexibility provided by this product is unmatched and an owner can display posts from multiple categories in the selected widget area. Users can also choose whether they want to show the comment count or not. They can also leave the current post out of the list if they so desire. There is also the beneficial feature of providing the “Read more” option below the displayed post.
2. Flexible Posts Widget
Another well-known product, Flexible Posts Widget is an extensively customizable plugin that gives a lot of flexibility to users. People can choose to get posts by post types or taxonomy and terms. They can also opt to get them directly from post IDs. The displayed content can be listed according to date, title, ID, menu order or the last modified date.
The display output can also be personalized with user-defined templates which are added to the current theme folder. It also has a feature for displaying an image with the post besides allowing the user to select the image size. Users have total control over the number of posts displayed and the number of posts to offset.
3. Advanced Random Posts Widget
The next entry on our list of WordPress recent post plugins is the Advanced Random Posts Widget. This product lets people use either a widget or a shortcode to display a list of the latest posts. A thumbnail, excerpt and post date can be chosen to accompany the posts in the list. Users can choose to display the posts from single, multiple or all tags, taxonomy and categories.
They can also set a custom class per widget and add custom HTML/ text before and after random posts. People who want to personalize the style of the plugin can do so by replacing the default stylesheet with their custom code.
4. Ultimate Posts Widget
The Ultimate Posts Widget is a plugin that is suitable for an amateur as well as a professional developer. It comes with numerous widget options along with hooks, filters and custom templates for personalization. People can choose to display author name with a link in addition to customary date, title and time. They can also order the content according to date title or the number of comments. A user can filter the displayed by categories, tags, sticky posts, current categories or tags.
They can also opt to add a text or HTML before and after posts lists. The plugin has beneficial features of inserting an image along with the text besides changing the length of the excerpt. With active installations numbering more than 30,000, this is a dependable product providing flexibility and ease of use to people.
5. Author Recent Posts
Author Recent Posts has a responsive widget for showing posts by an author on all single posts created by that person. Users have the flexibility to show or hide the featured image and they can also modify the dimensions of the chosen image. They can also display the author name in the title using the appropriate shortcode. The widget can be shown on single posts in the sidebar and also within the post content with the help of a shortcode.
This product is especially helpful for owners whose blogs have multiple authors. They can provide visitors with a convenient option for displaying the recent posts by an author whose post a guest is currently reading.
Conclusion
WordPress recent post plugins are convenient tools that provide website owners with flexible options to display the latest content posts in an attractive way. People must user services which help convert HTML CSS to WordPress or migrate websites from other formats to take advantage of such beneficial features.