Category Posts Widget 1.3

As promised, I’ve updated Category Posts Widget. Version 1.3 brings one new feature to the table: an option to show a post excerpt. I also converted the widget to the new WordPress 2.5 system of adding multiple widgets so 1.3 will only work on WordPress 2.5 or later. Please donate if you like this plugin! Full list of changes below.

Changes:

  • New option to display post excerpt below permalink.
  • Display as many posts from a category as you want.
  • Add as many widgets as you want.
  • WordPress 2.5 compatible only.

Note: You may have to reconfigure your CPW widgets if you are upgrading from a previous version.

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Download

You can download Category Posts Widget 1.3 at the official WordPress plugin repository.

Donate

This plugin was created by me and is made available free of charge. However, if you would like to show your appreciation, you can donate via PayPal by clicking the donate button in the sidebar. All funds go towards paying for my college expenses.

14 comments so far—help keep the conversation going.

  1. 1
    Michael said on April 19, 2008:

    Nice work on the widget. But I have a question.

    I am wanting to use the function on the home page of my blog(within the post) and I can not figure out what to type in to specify a category.

    function c2c_get_recent_posts (
    $categories = ”,

    if I type in $categories = ‘0′, I believe I get all posts, but I can’t figure out what the category ID’s are.

  2. 2
    max said on April 22, 2008:

    Very useful to us.
    I want to see sorting order on the posts. It’s latest first at the moment. I want alphabetical coz it’s used as a menu block.
    If I get someone to add it, will you include it into your code for others, please?

  3. 3
    Kjetil said on April 27, 2008:

    Hi
    Thanks again for a great plugin!
    I’ve had a weird experience, though: I’ve set up a widget for each of 26 categories (big site…) - but the contents/setup in each of them are often just deleted. The same happens with the settings I’ve inserted in the Widget Logic field (link below). Also, in those cases, the selected category is reset to the category with the lowest ID.
    I suspect there’s a plugin conflict, but I have not managed to find which is the sinner.
    Ideas?
    Thanks,
    Kjetil
    PS If you like, I can e-mail you a plugin list.
    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/

  4. 4
    Mike said on April 29, 2008:

    I am new to WordPress and not sure if this plug in will do what I need. Here is my blog, http://www.dietdrinkaddiction.com
    When you come to my site this is my home or static page I guess you all it, and on the left is a widget I acivated called Recent Posts. I want all my recent posts to show here, but not below the text in the static page. If you click on the recent post there, on the next page you will see my second post. Can this widget help me to show all recent posts on all pages, but just not add them to the text of the static home page?
    Thanks,Mike

  5. 5
    zhrance said on April 30, 2008:

    Hi there, I really like your plug-in! but is it possible to show images in the excerpt… The reason I ask is because I would like to use this plug-in to highlight some posts related to a specific category! Let me know!

    Kind regards,

    zhrance

  6. 6
    Ben Cheng said on May 14, 2008:

    Hi James! Great plugins! I’ve been using it but just come across a problem with solution, hope that can help some ppl:

    At line 58 of cat-posts.php, the call to “the_excerpt” depends on the global variable $post. But in the code the $post variable actually didn’t pass to global area so the wordpress’s function get_the_excerpt may not get the correct post excerpt…. a solution would be using $post->post_excerpt instead.

  7. 7
    James said on May 14, 2008:

    Ah, that must be why one user said the excerpt was the same on all his posts. The problem with $post->post_excerpt is that you have to specify an excerpt manually when writing a post.

    In theory the way I have it should work fine, I’ll have to look into what the problem is when I have time.

  8. 8
    Bill said on May 22, 2008:

    Love the plugin, but as with many of the widget type plugins that I find, you haven’t followed the standard (I’m assuming it’s the standard because it’s the way a plain text widget is output) for outputting the final code.

    Here is how the standard seems to work:

    AND here is how cat post does it:

    Your plugin should have a after the widget title and before beginning the list.

    I haven’t been able to get your plugin to work within my design so I’ve had to dig into your plugin.

    Otherwise the plugin is a life saver!

  9. 9
    farhang said on May 28, 2008:

    amazing plugin. looked for something like this for a long time

  10. 10
    Matt said on June 4, 2008:

    Great plugin. Do you have a version that can be embedded as a function in pages using the wordpress editor? Not yet confident making unique page templates and this would remove the need entirely!

    Cheers

  11. 11
    Chris Berry said on June 9, 2008:

    I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time to highlight some of my favorite all time posts. In theory it does exactly what I want, but when I test it, I don’t get an edit button on the widget to after the initial configuration. I’m on 2.5.1, and don’t have a huge number of other plug-ins in use.

  12. 12
    Anthony Catanese said on June 20, 2008:

    This is a great! I was looking everywhere for something along these lines.Is there a way to change how many words are in the excerpt? I googled this, but if I was to change the main excerpt setting it changes it for everything.If you have any advice it would very much appreciated.Thanks again for a great plug-in!

  13. 13
    Eugenio said on June 23, 2008:

    Hi James, is it possible to use this widget inside my template code? Im trying to do something just like this but to sort my posts by category. Basically displaying my category title, then some the posts, and the next category title and more posts. I know how to do this manually, but the problem is that when i add a new category, i would have to add a new loop too. Im looking for a method that will let me do this, and adds new categories automatically.

    Thanks!

  14. 14
    thisisnotablog » Blog Archive » Work In Progress said on June 30, 2008:

    [...] really like the category posts widget; I wanted a page that would display the most recent posts in all the categories (as I’m going [...]

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