jeff_

Articles to Sidebar allow you to put some articles into the sidebar of pages.
When you use WP as a “normal” CMS, you could want to add some custom boxes into the pages’ sidebars. 
Whith “Articles to Sidebar” you can write articles, put them into :
<ul>
<li>a special category (in order to display to all pages)</li>
<li>a category called the same as the current page</li>
<li>both special category and category called the same as the curent page</li>
</ul>
When the article is displayed into the sidebar, the fist images it contains is used to illustrate. 
The displayed content is the article’s excerpt. If there is no excerpt, the extend (before the <code></code> tag) is used and if there is no extend, one is computed (55 first words) and used.
You can choose to put a link to the article or not. That behavior can be chanched for each articles by using a custom boolean var (articles2sidebar_display_link : 1 force link | force no link).
<h3>Versions</h3>
1 first public release 
1.1 better handling of little images ; adding the link to image when present
<h3>Translations</h3>
Actually, there are no translations, but the plugin code is ready for them.

article2sidebar

Articles to Sidebar allow you to put some articles into the sidebar of pages.

Paul

Dave Goodchild

!! WARNING: Before activating this plugin, please DO NOT deactivate the previous Article Directory plugin if you have it installed !!
If you do deactivate, you will lose your settings. Once you have activated this new plugin, you may go to the plugins page and deactivate the old one. 
That way we make a backup of your settings because the old plugin is set to delete your settings automatically when you deactivate.
Please note: I’m not the original author but I’m open to suggestions on ways to add to and develop out the plugin. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the forums.
This is taken directly from the original <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/article-directory" rel="ugc">Article Directory plugin</a> last updated 3 years ago (2011-1-16), and made compatible with WordPress 3.9 and 
it’s updated database system.
Displays the structured list of categories (like in article directory), which can be easily customized with CSS. Also allows authors to publish articles and change their profile bypassing the admin interface. See an example at <a href="http://articlesss.com/" title="Article Directory" rel="nofollow ugc">Articlesss.com/</a>.
Standard features for categories list:
<ul>
<li>Showing an amount of articles in parent and child categories.</li>
<li>Showing a category description in link title.</li>
<li>Showing the empty categories.</li>
<li>Using hierarchy for subcategories.</li>
<li>Excluding a specified categories.</li>
</ul>
Special features for categories list:
<ul>
<li>Simple and handy design using CSS. The structure of categories is the multilevel list, which can be altered easily with CSS, as you need. The parent category have the <code><div></code> container to mark it out with CSS as a parent.</li>
<li>Parent category is showing amount of articles in subcategories. The character also include the number of articles in this parent category.</li>
<li>Showing a specified amount of child categories (2nd level).</li>
<li>Showing a categories in specified amount of columns.</li>
<li>Hiding all subcategories.</li>
<li>Adding an icons for each category in the list using CSS.</li>
</ul>
Additional features:
<ul>
<li>Authors can add articles and change their profile bypassing the admin interface.</li>
<li>Displaying the “Terms of article publication” on article submission page.</li>
<li>Excluding the child categories articles from the parent categories archive pages.</li>
<li>Ability to get an article source code.</li>
</ul>

Article Directory Redux

Displays the list of categories like in article directory and allows authors to publish articles and change their profile bypassing the admin area.

article2sidebar vs Article Directory Redux