Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails vs Featured Image Thumbnail Grid

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.

Visit the web site for detailed examples. Click on Shortcodes for examples https://www.plugins.shooflysolutions.com/thumbnail-grid/ This plugin gives you access to a simple shortcodes that displays post thumbnails in a grid. The plugin uses the featured image thumbnail if one exists. If one does not exist, the default thumbnail (if it exists) or title will be displayed instead. Use the category feature to ensure that all of the posts that you want to display in this manner have thumbnails. For instructions, shortcode descriptions & examples please visit the plugin web page. Please keep in mind that this plugin was first written in 2011 during a simpler time in the WordPress world. We are no longer writing plugins but every effort has been made to keep it compatible with newer WordPress version and that what started out as a very simple and basic plugin may no longer be suitable. We encourage you to seek out other alternatives if this doesn’t work for you and to report errors before posting a review. Some date functions are not currently working properly. Your input is important to us. This is a community and everything helps!For quicker support, please visit our website, read the faqs and email us at support@shooflysolutions.com. Donations for extended support are appreciated but are never required! This plugin gives you access to two a simple shortcake to display post thumbnails in a grid. The plugin uses the featured image thumbnail if one exists. If one does not exist, the title will be displayed instead. Use the category feature to ensure that all of the posts that you want to display in this manner have thumbnails. This plugin is not designed to show several pages of thumbnails, rather it is designed to allow you to embed thumbnails into any page or to display a subset of thumbnails on a page. To show more thumbnails on a page than the default value Blog pages show at most, use a fixed value for posts_per_page or try setting the posts_per_page value to ’999′. Your theme must be enabled for post thumbnails. POSTS & PAGES You can use any of the parameters listed in the wordpress codex. Click here to see the WordPress Codex for Posts Here are some of the most common paramaters: cat = (*Use cat instead of category for posts if category does not work) category id. To view the category id, go to your post categories, edit the category and look in the browser address bar for the category id. If you don’t see it, click your mouse in the address bar. It should look something like this. The category id is 7: [[your site goes here]]/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?action=edit&taxonomy=category&tag_ID=7&post_type=post posts_per_page – the number of posts to display. The default is -1. This causes the post count to default to the value in Blog pages show at most. post_type – the type of posts to display. The default is ‘post”. Enter any type that supports thumbnails. Obviously, you want to have featured images set for all of the posts that you are displaying in this grid. You can use ‘page’ here if your theme supports thumbnails on pages. You can enter custom post types, like ‘events’ in this section too. orderby – Sort retrieved posts by parameter. The default is none. order – ‘DESC’ or ‘ASC’ tag – use the tag name, not the tag id. [thumbnailgrid cat=’1′ posts=’5′ type=’post’ order_by=’author’ order=’ASC’]” Will display the thumbnails for the 5 most recent posts from the category with the id of 1 sorted by the author name in ascending order [thumbnailgrid] Will display the thumbnails using the default value in the Reading settings Blog pages show at most. Examples: [bkthumbnailgrid category=”4″ limit=”5″] displays the thumbnails for the first 5 bookmarks where the link category is 4. [bkthumbnailgrid orderby=”owner” order=”DESC”] displays all thumbnails for all bookmarks ordered descending by the name of the owner. Shortcodes Most properties can be set in the style sheet or in the custom css module for your theme. The following settings are shortcode settings that apply to individual grids. Note that for width and height values you may use any valid unit of height: px, cm, %, etc. Note: Media Image sizes are configured in the wordpress admin panel under Settings/Media. The default thumbnail size is 150px by 150px. The style sheet is configured to handle the default thumbnail size. To properly display your images, you must modify the height and witdth in the thumbanil shortcode or the style sheet. Visit ShooflySolutions for demos. height The height of thumbnail image. This value defaults to the height of the thumbnail or the setting in the style sheet. width The width of the thumbnail image. This value defaults to the width of the thumbnail or the setting in the style sheet. To display an image proportionately, set this value to ‘auto’; gridwidth The width of the grid. this value defaults to the width of the grid area or to the setting in the style sheet. maxgridwidth The maximum width of the grid. This is the better option to use when aligning grid left/right/center if you want the grid to wrap showcaption Set showcaption=FALSE to hide the captions showcaption defaults to TRUE captionheight This value sets the caption height and hides the overflow (if there is more text than can fit into the caption area, it will not be visible). The display defaults to one line of text or the value in the style sheet. captionwidth The caption width. This value defaults to the width variable above or to the setting in the style sheet. wraptext Wrap the text in the caption. Normally the text is limited to one line and overflow is indicated by an elipses. Please note that, to avoid a misaligned grid, you should set a caption height when wrapping text in a grid that has more than one row. wraptext defaults to FALSE aligngrid When the gridwidth value is set, set this value to left, right, center or autocenter (uses jQuery) imagesize Media Image sizes are configured in the wordpress admin panel under Settings/Media. You can use any size in the plugin. The default value is ‘thumb’. thumb thumbnail medium large post-thumbnail (To proportionately size images, try setting the height=”100%” width=”auto”) Added support for codex features that were not loading through the shortcode: before show posts before a specific date. As a feature of this plugin, you can set this field to before=”today” after show posts after a specific date. As a feature of this plugin, you can set this field to after=”today” inclusive include the before and/or after date in the query post__not_in exclude posts (comma delimited id’s) in this list post__in include posts (comma delimited id’s) in this list post_parent__in include posts (comma delimited id’s) with parent id’s in this list. Would be handy for post_type=”page” post_parent__not_in exclude posts (comma delimited id’s) with parent id’s in this list. Would be handy for post_type=”page” tag_slug__and include posts (comma delimited strings) with tags that match all of the tag slugs in this list. tag_slug__in exclude posts (comma delimited strings) that have a tag that matches any of the tags in this list debug_query for advanced users or upon request for support purposes, set debug_query=true to view the SQL query. Arbitrary section Need more? Customization is available. Contact sales@shooflysolutions.com for more information.