This latest update introduces a few new features:
- Support for WordPress 2.9′s post thumbnails.
- Option to show the post date.
- Option to show the comment count.
- Option to set the word length of the excerpt.
Note that support for Simple Post Thumbnails has been removed in favor of the built in functionality.
You can download the plugin at the WordPress plugin repository: Download here.
Please donate if you find this plugin useful.
Update: Several people have been reporting an error “Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach()…” I just pushed out version 3.1 which should fix this. This bug could have been fixed if I had done some more rigorous testing. I’ll do better next time.
Excellent plugin. I do have a quick question though. Is there an easy way to format the thumbs horizontally like you have done with your “recent photos” section on your home page? I don't see an option to choose a horizontal display, my install seems to stack the thumbs vertically. I'd like to do something almost identical to how you have your recent photos with the thumbs running horizontally.
Thanks!
hi, is there a way to have it display in alphabetical order?
thanks.
Jane, I just checked out your site and it looks like you resolved the thumbnail positioning problem. I would also like to display the thumbnail to the left with the text to the right. Just wondered if you could let me know how you modified the plugin.
Many thanks
Dave
How can I use the plug-in in other places, not only as a sidebar widget, for example, in the body
Did the 2.9.2 update create an issue with the excerpt? I can´t seem to get it working now… the only thing I can think of was updating this morning
I get a message saying “are you sure you want to do this” Please try again later …..
????
Any ideas? I am up to date with wordpress upgrades etc.
Hi,
Is there a way to make the posts appear in alphabetical order according to the title?
Thanks,
John
I dowanloaded the plugin but when trying to change the option I realized that the thumbnail option does not exist. The screenshot you have iwth the plugin does not look the same.
I deleted the plugin and reinstall but still the same.
Can you please help?
James, I am also having some issues with spacing. I would like the post-date to appear on the same line as the excerpt, however, after hours of css and snippet replacements I am still stumped. Please help =)
John, James was wonderful enough to forward me the code for alphabetizing. This snippet should be edited into your cat-posts.php file:
// Get array of post info.
$cat_posts = new WP_Query(“showposts=” . $instance["num"] . “&cat=” . $instance["cat"] . '&orderby=title&order=asc' );
echo $before_widget;
I'm an idiot, but can you insert the plugin directly into a post with a shortcode? ……everyone starts somewhere, please help
Hi,
I'm having the same problem. Were you able to solve it in any way?
Thanks,
Olle
You should call wp_reset_query() at the last line of the widget() method, like WordPress does in the WP_Widget_Recent_Posts widget. Otherwise the next call to the_post() to show the main post/page will return the last post that the widget showed.
Have a look here: http://webstractions.com/wordpress/undocumented...
How can I display title and post excerpt for only the first post in the list and titles only for the remaining? Kind of like a featured post within the category widget. I do want to display the thumbs for all.
Thank you for this wonderful plugin!
Hi!
Can this widget add “current-page-item” or “page-item” to the links generated?
This is a great plugin! Just one issue. I can't seem to make my thumbnails appear any larger than when I first set them. I need them to be 150px wide X 50px high. It looks like the original (or some) dimensions have been hardcoded into the image. My theme (Hybrid News), supports default thumbnails of 150×150. How do I set the thumbnails to a new, larger size?
I am using 3.1, and it worked great. Then all of a sudden it broke – I have it in a WishList Member protected site. When not logged in, the widgets display correctly. When logged in, however, each instance extends to include many empty lines, so they stretch far down the page. I updated nothing, yet all of a sudden it doesn't work. I'm heart-broken! can you help? You can see it on BBSTutorials.com/members – let me know if you need a login also.
Actually, they stretch so huge not when I log in, but when I click on a post under a category – the sidebar widgets are still there, but they got hugely long.
I'd like to see this implemented, too. And I also second the call for more control over spacing – the list takes up way too much room.
Many thanks for a useful plug-in.
Hello, I have this installed in my theme sidebar via widget – and it works great! I am wondering if there are shortcodes that I can use so that I can have category experts in the main content of my page (not just the sidebar)Kindly let me know if this is possible? Thanks so much!
Here is what I did to put the date and post title on the same line so that it looks like:
Sun.Apr.17 – Post title
Go to the plugin in WordPress (NOT Dreamweaver) and edit it from there. Search for this line:
<?php if ( $instance['date'] ) : ?>
<?php the_time(“j M”); ?>
<?php endif; ?>
I cut this line out and pasted it about 8 lines above inside the <a class=”post-title” line of code. It now looks like:
<a class=”post-title” href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” rel=”bookmark” <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>”><?php if ( $instance['date'] ) : ?><?php the_time(“D.M.j”); ?><?php endif; ?><?php _e(' – ',woothemes); ?><?php the_title(); ?>
You might have to delete
<?php _e(' – ',woothemes); ?>
since it might be theme specific. All that line does is insert the hyphen between the date and post title. Hope this helps.
Hey James, love the plugin, use it on several websites. Simple and easy to use. I was wondering if you could help me get the sticky posts on top?
I was able to figure it out for my news page using 2 loops but I am not as good as you. Don't need a admin option just hard coded with a comment would be nice. If there is some way to make it worth your time let me know.
I want to thank you for this plugin.
I made the default number of post 15. In most of the sites I do, 10 is not quite enough and 20 seems too many. I can still change it in the options, but 15 seems a good number to start with.
Thanks again.
Hey thanks for plugin. Is there any way to display Sub category name??
First – thanks for creating this plugin! It serves a useful purpose.
All posts being displayed through my single post page were showing the same text/result. Removing your plugin from my sidebar widget fixed this bug. Is it possible that you overwrite a global wordpress variable that keeps track of the post information? If so, do you have an estimate on when it will be fixed?
Thanks!
Duplicate post, sorry.
To anyone having issues with the_excerpt,
I kinda fix this thing changing “the_excerpt()” for “echo get_the_excerpt()”
Everything else works perfect, thank you so much James.
This is an excellent widget, thank you. It does seem to be stripping out the links inside of the post when it displays the excerpt. The excerpt shows up in the sidebar with “click here” text, but there's no link. Is there a way to get the anchors back in? Thank you!
Hi,
Have the same problem as you. Have you found any solution?
Best // Daniel
Hey James, great plugin, thanks! One thing I'm having trouble with is it showing the proper posts when using it inside a wp membership site, for example using WishList Member. For example, you can setup membership levels in WL and in each level, only certain categories and posts will show. When using the latest CPW (3.1) it shows posts from other categories that are not tagged for that level. An older version of CPW (1.32) seems to work fine and what other users of WL are using to display posts from a single category. Any way to get a copy of 1.32 or see why 3.1 isn't showing properly? Found another plugin that does something similar (but not as well as CPW) and works fine, showing only the posts allowed in each member level. Thanks much James!
Hi, very useful. But FONT appears completely different to rest of site. Is there a way to match FONTs and sizes.
Hi there, any chance this can be modified to display a drop-down box of category posts as opposed to an unordered list?
If so, could you perhaps give me a pointer as to where to start?
Thanks in advance.
Jas
Hi James, vey useful widget. Is there a way to change the Font type to that of the whole site. At the moment the default seems to be twice the size of all othe fonts. Thanks.
I've having an issue that maybe someone else has noticed. I love the plug in and it seems to work on every page except when I search. When I search for a keyword and end up on the search page were the results are displayed, the widget now shows me the posts that match my search instaed of only the ones in the category I've designeated. I double checked and right now I only have one post in that category so it should only ever show me that one post, but the behavior changes when I do a search. Any ideas?
Its my first time trying to install this and I am getting this error:
Installing Plugin from uploaded file: category-posts.3.1.zip
Unpacking the package.
Installing the plugin.
Destination folder already exists. /home2/midnign6/public_html/wp-content/plugins/category-posts/
Plugin Install Failed.
Actions: Return to Plugins page
Yeah I don't see the image preview thumbnail
Hey James,
It'd be great if there was an option to use
instead of unordered list.
I'm using it here: http://suklaa.org/ the two left columns are just two manually updated text columns and the blog one is you Cotegory Posts Widget.
Anyhow, thanks for a great widget!
kristian
hi james,
great plugin – but how do I display post thumbnails? i don’ t get the option in the widget area..
thanks a lot
Hi,
How can i exclude a certain category from showing up on the side list? I am a newbie, but i know the cat ID is 11.
hey James,
Thanks for the great widget. It works perfectly.
I’ve been looking for a way to change the code in order to display the thumbnail before the text instead of after. Is there any way you could help me with this?
Hi, of course, exluding Cats should be very nice, for example i wanna use the plugin more than one time but without doubles.
Is there any way to do that? Or will it be added?
Thx a lot!
Hello,
I’m also not seeing the option to add a thumbnail. Please advise!
Thanks.
Has anyone figured out how to make this plugin display the current page item class? I have tried in every way imaginable, but it won’t work. Thanks for any help!
I’m having trouble with the widget. It’s not showing up and I don’t have the thumbnail option.
Hi! I want to use the widget 4 or 5 times on the sidebar to show the 4 or 5 parent categories that have a bunch of child categories under them, but, the widget only shows the child categories and not the parents. Is there any way to fix this?
I am looking for a way to remove the post thumbnail from the category page. Can you help?
I’m trying to use this plugin with WP 3.0 and having troubles getting the plugin to pull up the thumbnails not the full image. Gone through the code and cannot edit the thumbnail unless I edit the CSS, but I’m wanting a cropped thumbnail so that is not a solution for me.
Any help would be appreciated.
“‘Note that support for Simple Post Thumbnails has been removed in favor of the built in functionality.”
What does this mean? How do I make it display an image? That is what was most appealing about this plugin for me.
Have there been any solutions found for getting the plugin to display thumbnails? I don’t see any options whatsoever… I see the code in the widget files for the thumbs… but nothing shows as an option and I’m not getting any thumbnails to display. Any help would be much appreciated.
LOVE this plugin…
One issue… won’t validate XHTML Strict. Finding an error with the tages around the excerpt, comment count, etc…
Here’s the error from w3c:
Line 699, Column 33: document type does not allow element “p” here; missing one of “object”, “ins”, “del”, “map”, “button” start-tag
Any ideas?
Thanks for making this!