Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails

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

1. Title of the widget
2. Number of listed posts
3. Open post links in new windows
4. Different options for post order and sorting
5. Hide the current post in list
6. Show only sticky posts
7. Hide sticky posts
8. Keep sticky posts on top of the list if not hidden
9. Hide post title
10. Maximum length of post title
11. Show post author name
12. Label for the author names
13. Show post categories
14. Show post category names as links to their archives
15. Label for categories
16. Show post date
17. Show post excerpt
18. Show number of comments
19. Excerpt length
20. Signs after excerpt
21. Ignore post excerpt field as excerpt source (builds excerpts only from the post content)
22. Ignore post content as excerpt source (builds excerpts only from the excerpt fields)
23. Show posts of selected categories (or of all categories)
24. Show post thumbnail (featured image)
25. Registered thumbnail dimensions
26. Thumbnail width in px
27. Thumbnail height in px
28. Keep the aspect ratio of thumbnails
29. Try to take the first post image as thumbnail
30. Only use the first post image as thumbnail
31. Use default thumbnail if no thumbnail is available
32. Always use default thumbnail
33. Default thumbnail URL
34. Alternative text of the default thumbnail
35. Omit all alternative texts of the thumbnails for a better accessibility
36. Print slugs of post categories in class attribute of LI elements
37. Print inline CSS instead of creating a CSS file
38. No CSS generation at all

Useful hints for developers: Supported Hooks

The plugin considers the output of actions hooked on:

1. rpwwt_widget_posts_args
   • passed argument: the query arguments as an array
   • expected return value: an array of query arguments
2. widget_title
   • passed arguments:
     1. the widget title as a string
     2. the widget settings as an array
     3. the widget base ID as a string
   • expected return value: a string
3. rpwwt_excerpt_length
   • passed argument: the maximum number of characters for the post excerpt as an integer
   • expected return value: an integer
4. rpwwt_excerpt_more
   • passed argument: the string to append after the post excerpt
   • expected return value: a string
5. rpwwt_the_excerpt
   • passed arguments:
     1. the content of the post excerpt field as a string
     2. the post object
   • expected return value: a string
6. the_excerpt
   • passed argument: the post excerpt as a string
   • expected return value: a string
7. rpwwt_categories
   • passed argument: the category list of each post as a string
   • expected return value: a string
8. rpwwt_list_cats
   • passed arguments:
     1. the category name as a string
     2. 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.