Content Aware Sidebars – Fastest Widget Area Plugin vs Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails

Content Aware Sidebars is the #1 WordPress Sidebar Plugin You can optimize conversion rates, boost on-site SEO, upsell products, and much more by displaying different widget areas on different conditions. Create tailored widget areas in seconds. No widget logic coding required. Show or Hide Widgets on Any Page (Yes, any) Replace your theme sidebars on different conditions, or insert widget areas with shortcodes. The following Display Conditions are available out of the box: Posts, Pages & Custom Post Types Content with Tags, Categories, or Custom Taxonomies Content written by select Authors Page Templates Blog Page & Post Type Archives Author Archives Taxonomy Archives Front Page, Search Results, 404 Not Found Page bbPress Profiles, Forums & Topics BuddyPress Profile Sections Languages (Polylang, qTranslate X, TranslatePress, Transposh, Weglot, WPML) Pods Pages You can even combine conditions in any way you like! E.g. target all posts in a select category and written by a specific author. Add Unlimited Sidebars & Widget Areas Create a post sidebar, a page sidebar, a category sidebar, or any custom sidebar you need – no coding required. CAS will never slow down your site, even if you create a lot of custom sidebars and conditions. Sidebars – Quick Select© lets you add or select widget areas directly when editing a post or page. Schedule & Disable Custom Sidebars In the All-in-one Sidebar Manager you just pick a start and end date for when widget areas should be displayed, and CAS will take care of the rest. 1-Click Sidebar Activation© lets you activate or deactivate widget areas instantly. The Most User-friendly Widget Manager When adding new widgets to sidebars, Live Search will find widgets instantly, and the smart split-screen makes it a joy to manage a lot of widgets and sidebars. The Enhanced Widget Manager adds the signature turquoise line to easily identify custom sidebars. Sidebar Plugin Integrations & Support CAS autodetects Custom Post Types and Taxonomies created by any plugin or theme. Built-in support for some of the most popular WordPress plugins means that you e.g. can create WooCommerce sidebars for select products or BuddyPress sidebars for your members. bbPress BuddyPress / BuddyBoss Easy Digital Downloads qTranslate X Pods Polylang TranslatePress Transposh Translation Filter WooCommerce Weglot WPML Customize Your Widget Areas Your Way Without writing any code, you can modify the HTML and CSS classes of widget areas, widgets, and widget titles. You get full control over the look and feel of your sidebars and widget areas, no matter what theme you use. Sidebar Visibility lets you elegantly hide any widget area for logged-out users. Complete control over your WordPress widget areas Upgrade to Content Aware Sidebars Pro and get these additional powerful features: Totem – Smart Floating Button Like the button you may have seen by Intercom or Helpscout, only this is for all your widgets Sticky Sidebars & Widget Areas Make any sidebar or widget area sticky without hurting site performance. No jQuery and no bloat Widget Areas after Paragraphs Display a widget area after a specific number or percentage of paragraphs in your content Even More Display Conditions Advanced Custom Fields data Meta Box data URLs + wildcards Referrer URLs Date Archives & Content by publish date BuddyPress Groups Random Widget Area Designer Add responsive widget columns and edit colors, backgrounds, paddings, etc. Widget Areas in Theme Hooks Intelligently infuse new widget areas into your theme without coding Automatic Widgets Backup Easily restore any changed or deleted widgets Widget Cleaner Save memory and remove clutter by disabling and removing unused widgets Extended User Visibility Show or hide widget areas for User Roles, BuddyPress Groups, and more Time & Weekday Schedule Display widget areas only in select time ranges on given days Container Widget Turn widget areas into reusable blocks and show the same widgets in different places Duplicate Widget Areas A real time-saver when adding new similar widget areas and so much more… Upgrade at anytime instantly and securely from your website’s Admin Dashboard. More Information Documentation GitHub Twitter

List the most recent posts with post titles, thumbnails, excerpts, authors, categories, dates and more! Although the plugin is built only for widget areas users reported that it works in Elementor and works in Oxygen. 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 information 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 height 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. Custom Post Type If you want to list custom post types with the featured image, please check out our plugin Ultimate Post List Pro. Demo You want to test Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails before installing on your site? Try it out on your individual and free playground site and click here. What users wrote “This plugin performs a simple task but one that I find to be invaluable.” reviews by funkster on July 1, 2025 “I just want to say thank you for developing such a good plugin.” in the reviews by modelaid on July 3, 2024 “Excellent plugin!” in the reviews by mystnick on April 18, 2023 “… one of the dynamic and smart, yet admin and user optimized widget plugins …” in How to Add Widgets and Start Using Them in WordPress Website? by SKT Posts Themes on September 3, 2020 “بهترین افزونه های نمایش آخرین نوشته ها در وردپرس” in ابزارک آخرین نوشته وردپرس by Ghodsi on December 16, 2019 “Another good all around widget, suitable for most projects” in Free WordPress recent posts widget – Which one is the best? on December 3, 2019 “In just a few clicks, your website will look considerably more established and professional.” in 3 Best WordPress Thumbnail Plugins to Manage Images Perfectly by HubSpot Staff on October 29, 2019 The best of the recent posts widgets in the reviews by noddemix on June 13, 2019 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 “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 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 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 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 Different options for post order and sorting Hide the 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 name Label for the author names 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 the 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 Always use default thumbnail Default thumbnail URL Alternative text of the default thumbnail Omit all alternative texts of the thumbnails for a better accessibility 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 Useful hints for developers: Supported Hooks The plugin considers the output of actions hooked on: rpwwt_widget_posts_args passed argument: the query arguments as an array expected return value: an array of query arguments widget_title passed arguments: the widget title as a string the widget settings as an array the widget base ID as a string expected return value: a string rpwwt_excerpt_length passed argument: the maximum number of characters for the post excerpt as an integer expected return value: an integer rpwwt_excerpt_more passed argument: the string to append after the post excerpt expected return value: a string rpwwt_the_excerpt passed arguments: the content of the post excerpt field as a string the post object expected return value: a string the_excerpt passed argument: the post excerpt as a string expected return value: a string rpwwt_categories passed argument: the category list of each post as a string expected return value: a string rpwwt_list_cats passed arguments: the category name as a string the category as an array expected return value: a string Useful hints for developers: Available CSS Selectors To design the list and its items, you can use these CSS selectors: .rpwwt-widget: the element which contains the post list .rpwwt-widget ul: the list which contains the list items .rpwwt-widget ul li: the list item in the list .rpwwt-widget ul li.rpwwt-sticky: the list item of a sticky post .rpwwt-widget ul li a: link in the list .rpwwt-widget ul li a img: linked image .rpwwt-widget ul li a span.rpwwt-post-title: the post title .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-author: the post author .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-categories: the post category list .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-date: the post date .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-excerpt: the post excerpt .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-excerpt .rpwwt-post-excerpt-more: the "more" text following the excerpt. .rpwwt-widget ul li div.rpwwt-post-comments-number: the number of comments Languages The user interface is available in several languages. Starting from version 7.1.0 the handling for translations are moved to translate.wordpress.org. Please help to translate into more languages, or you can re-work on the current translations if you think it’s needed. If you have done your translation, please leave a comment in the plugin’s support forum. I’ll take care of the review and approval.