WordPress Plugin: Recent Posts
One of the most important things you can do for your readers is install this plugin; Recent Posts by Nick Momrik. This very simple plugin allows you to display, on the sidebar, a variable number of recent posts.
Now, you are probably thinking,
"So what? I just keep my ten most recent posts on my main page, why would I want to use this?"
Well, there are several reasons for you to use this plugin:
- Reasons to use
- It's very easy to use
- It's very easy to install
- I said so
What? You don't like those reasons? How about the functionality of the plugin? The plugin takes the following arguments:
- Arguments
- $no_posts - sets the number of recent posts to display
- $before - text to be displayed before the link to the recent post
- $after - text to be displayed after the link to the recent post
- $hide_pass_post - whether or not to display password protected posts
- $skip_posts - allows skipping of a number of posts before showing the number of posts specified with the $no_posts parameter
- $show_excerpts - allows the post excerpt to be output after the post title
- $include_pages - allows recent pages to be show with recent posts
How about all of that? Most Recent Post plugins only show... the last X posts. This plugin allows you set a good number of variables that tell the plugin just which recent posts to show.
Do your readers a favor, install this plugin so they can find your most recent posts. Don't forget, if a reader finds your blog from Google or Yahoo they will likely not be landing on your home page!
- About the move…
- WordPress Plugin: Google Sitemap Generator
- Is the WordPress Top Commentator plugin screwing up Technorati?
- Major flaw in MyBlogLog plug-in for WordPress
- Do You Follow?
Or you can install the new Spotback “Rate Everything” widget which gives you recent posts, recomended posts and a tag cloud. It also allows you to see what people actually like.
Sorry to sound like I’m working for them, but it’s really great.
Check it out on http://www.spotback.com
You’re stealing my thunder! I was going to ask you about that plugin this week and then report on it… Grrr…
Never too late to delete all these comments…put on these green glasses as if nothing happened :-D
have you learned nothing from digg?
I’ve got a post in the works about all the wonderful things I learned from Digg.
I was thinking we needed to add this type of plugin. Have you ever tried the one that lists the most popular instead of the most recent? I’m going to pull this one down and give it a try. Thanks.
I used to use a “most popular” widget on my Serendipity blog but I don’t know how useful it was at generating hits on those articles.
I hesitate to use any plugin that shows popularity of articles or hits on an article as it can quickly lead you to writing based on popularity rather than writing what you want or feel like writing.
You gotta have the Recent Posts in your sidebar! It not only gives a new reader a quick idea of the type of writing you do, but it allows your regular reader to be aware of something they may have missed.
I had one friend who would miss my weekend posts because he’d only check my blog during the weekday. He’d see my Monday post and think that was the latest and not scroll down. He was happy when I put in the Recent posts!
I use the Recent Posts that comes with the sidebar widget and it doesn’t give me any options to select how many posts to display.