darrinb

Build a better post list.
The Advanced Posts Widget is an enhanced version of the default WordPress Recent Posts widget. It allows for greater customization and stying of your recent content lists.
Make your post lists stand out with this highly customizable recent post widget!
Features
<ul>
<li>Build multiple lists!</li>
<li>Select which post types to display. (You can choose either all types, or a specific type.)</li>
<li>Set the number of posts to show.</li>
<li>Choose how to order your posts: publish date, alphabetically, random, etc.</li>
<li>Set the order for displaying the posts.</li>
<li>Filter by category, tag, or custom taxonomy.</li>
<li>Supports post thumbnails.</li>
<li>Set and preview custom thumbnail sizes, or choose from your site’s registered image sizes.</li>
<li>Show an excerpt of the post.</li>
<li>Set and preview the length of the excerpt.</li>
<li>Select the list format to match your site’s markup. Choose from: <code>ol</code>, <code>ul</code>, or <code>div</code>.</li>
<li>Select the listing format. Choose between <code>html5</code> or <code>xhtml</code>.</li>
<li>Show post date.</li>
<li>Set and preview multiple date formats.</li>
<li>Choose the default (basic) CSS styling or roll your own.</li>
</ul>
Developer Features
This widget was built not only with end-users in mind, but also plugin developers. Almost every aspect of this widget is extensible through filters and action hooks. You can even add your own form fields to the widget form!
<ul>
<li>Need to remove a field from the widget form? Not a problem! Every field is passed through its own filter for easy customization.</li>
<li>Need to modify the output of the widget? Easy! The output is passed through numerous filters, allowing you to customize the post list to meet your project’s requirements.</li>
<li>For a full list of action hooks and filters, please see the plugin documentation: http://darrinb.com/plugins/advanced-posts-widget</li>
</ul>
For sample functions check out this small testing plugin: https://github.com/dboutote/Advanced-Posts-Widget-Testing

Advanced Posts Widget

I tested quite a few different Recent Posts Widgets and they all had bugs or outdated code or lack of flexibility or simple settings for their images and whatnot. This plugin does all the things you need:
* Set your thumbnail size from a list of registered image sizes
* Choose your category
* Choose your post type
* Even works with the Organize Series plugin well
* Order by recency, title, or even random (my favorite)
Combine this with the Display Widgets plugin and you have a powerful and flexible and intuitive sidebar that works great with your theme. 
Well done!



Exactly what my blog needed

A powerful and flexible recent posts widget for WordPress for displaying customized content lists.  Supports all custom post types and taxonomies!

aryanduntley

With the general posts widget, you can place a list of posts into your widget areas based on any query parameters available in WP_QUERY. You can generate the latest posts, popular posts (given you have some method of tracking post hits), post types, filter by category or other taxonomy, filter by post meta, etc… If it’s available in WP_QUERY it’s available to you in the widget. If there are customizations that the interface does not allow for, there are a number of hooks that allow you to edit and control pretty much any part of the widget from adjusting the query to adjusting the output.
<h4>Please Note</h4>
There is no styling associated with this plugin. If you wish to style the output, assign a class and/or an ID to the widget and style appropriately in your style.css file.
<blockquote>
<h4>Available Hooks</h4>
<ul>
<li><code>add_filter( 'widget_title', 'my_Func'); function my_Func($title){return $title;}</code></li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_adjust_genposts_query','my_Func', 10, 3); function my_Func( $queryargs, $widgetargs, $instance){return $queryargs}</code> 
 <code>$widgetargs</code> contains things like <code>before_widget</code> and <code>after_widget</code>. <code>$instance</code> contains the widget params you added in the UI.</li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_genposts_titlefilter', 'my_Func', 10, 6); function my_Func($fintitle, $before_title, $title, $after_title, $instance){return $fintitle}</code></li>
<li><code>add_filter</code>(‘wpr_genposts_listloop’, ‘my_Func’, 10, 5); function my_Func($thisprint, $found_posts, $post, $count, $instance){return $thisprint;} 
 This filter is within the loop that prints the <code><li>'s</code>. <code>$thisprint</code> is the final string containing all the html including the <code><li></code> opening and closing tags. This filter will likely be the one used the most. By default, this outputs the featured image (if one exists) and the title. That’s all. In order to edit the output of the loop, you would want to edit your my_Func function to something else, utilizing the $post variable which contains all the post information (title, excerpt, content, permalink, ect…). This is up to you to customize however you wish. I’m sure the support area will fill up with questions in regards to outputting the lists in a certain fashion. Most people will not read or understand this that I wrote here and many examples will likely sprout up in the support section, so stay tuned and read through those (unless you are the very first to ask for support) before posting a support question. This plugin is free and support should not be expected. I will have a general support license available at a later time, for all WPR plugins, but for now, don’t expect, but be grateful if I do answer. I’m usually good about it though.</li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_genposts_addtoend', 'my_Func', 10, 2); function my_Func($readingon, $instance){return $readingon;}</code> 
 This filter allows you to customize the read more link that is shown after all the posts are displayed. The final text/html is the <code>$readingon</code> variable and the <code>$instance</code> provides you with all the widget instance params you supplied in the widget interface.</li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_genposts_list_print', 'my_Func', 10, 6); function my_Func($finalprint, $openprint, $toprint, $closeprint, $instance, $wpQuery){return $finalprint;}</code> 
 This supplies the final list with the container divs and everything else. <code>$openprint</code> contains the opening div with the id and class supplied by the widget interface. It also includes the openieng <code><ul></code> tag. <code>$closeprint</code> contains all the closure tags for the <code>$openprint</code> as well as the readmore link/text. <code>$toprint</code> contains everything in between (the result of the query contained in <code><li></code> tags). <code>$wpQuery</code> contains the WP_Query instance, which can be used for pagination or anything else where the data provided could be useful. To add pagination, something like this would work: 
 <code>function homeAddPages($finalprint, $openprint, $toprint, $closeprint, $instance, $postsQ){ 
 $big = 999999999; 
 $cpage = get_query_var('paged')?get_query_var('paged'):0; 
 if(!isset($cpage) || $cpage == "" || $cpage === 0){ 
 $cpage = get_query_var('page')?get_query_var('page'):1; 
 } 
 $addclose = paginate_links( array( 
 'base' => str_replace( $big, '%#%', esc_url( get_pagenum_link( $big ) ) ), 
 'format' => '?paged=%#%', 
 'current' => max( 1, $cpage), 
 'total' => $postsQ->max_num_pages 
 ) ); 
 return $openprint . $toprint . $closeprint . '<div class="hpaginator">' . $addclose . '</div>'; 
 } 
 add_filter('wpr_genposts_list_print', 'homeAddPages', 10, 6);</code></li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_adjust_genposts_beforewidget', 'my_Func', 10, 3); function my_Func($before_widget, $post_widgeid, $post_widgeclass){return $before_widget;}</code> 
 This allows you to modify the before widget string which contains the wrapper div with id and class. You have access to the ID and Class you defined within the widget in order to tell instances apart from each other. 
 <code>unction wpr_changeBeforeWidget($before_widget, $post_widgeid, $post_widgeclass){ 
 if($post_widgeid == 'theothers'){ 
 return str_replace('class="', 'class="theothersblock ', $before_widget); 
 } 
 if($post_widgeid == 'thefeatured'){ 
 return str_replace('class="', 'class="thefeaturedblock ', $before_widget); 
 } 
 return $before_widget; 
 } 
 add_filter('wpr_adjust_genposts_beforewidget', 'wpr_changeBeforeWidget', 10, 3);</code></li>
<li><code>add_filter('wpr_adjust_genposts_afterwidget', 'my_Func', 10, 3); function my_Func($after_widget, $post_widgeid, $post_widgeclass){return $after_widget;}</code> 
 This is identical to the wpr_adjust_genposts_beforewidget hook except this one allows you to modify the after widget string. These last two allow you direct control over each individual widget container. These before and after strings are set in the register_sidebar function when creating the sidebars, but they are generic for all widgets in that sidebar and WP does not offer any hooks to modify this directly. There is a workaround to add the action for register_sidebar, get the sidebar object and then adjust the $wp_registered_sidebars global, but in order to do this, you would have to know the order id number of the specific widget. Doing it that way can be problematic.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<h4>Instance Variables</h4>
<ul>
<li><code>$title = apply_filters( 'widget_title', $instance['title'] );</code></li>
<li><code>$post_amount = $instance['show'];</code> This is the posts per page (total posts to show)</li>
<li><code>$post_orderby = $instance['orderby'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_order = $instance['order'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_catin = $instance['catin'];</code> Category In</li>
<li><code>$post_catout = $instance['catout'];</code> Category Exclude</li>
<li><code>$pagecount = $instance['pagecount'];</code> Numer of Posts to show (not used, this is so you can define total posts to query and number to show per tabbed interface which is not implemented in the plugin, but available for hooking)</li>
<li><code>$post_taxis = $instance['taxis'];</code> Taxonamy slug</li>
<li><code>$post_taxterm = $instance['taxterm'];</code> Taxonomy term ids, comma separated list</li>
<li><code>$post_typed = $instance['ptipe'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_metakey = $instance['metakey'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_metavalue = $instance['metavalue'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_comparison = $instance['metacompare'];</code> Meta comparison operator</li>
<li><code>$post_widgeid = $instance['widgetidentifier'];</code> Widget Container ID</li>
<li><code>$post_widgeclass = $instance['widgetclassifier'];</code> Widget Container Class</li>
<li><code>$post_readmoretitle = $instance['readmoretitle'];</code></li>
<li><code>$post_readmorelink = $instance['readmorelink'];</code></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Plugin site: <a href="http://worldpressrevolution.com/wpr_myplugins/wpr-general-posts-widget/" title="Aryan Duntley's Worldpress Revolution wordpress tutorials" rel="nofollow ugc">WorldpressRevolution</a>

WPR General Posts

Gives you full control of a post listing widget.

Advanced Posts Widget vs WPR General Posts