DaveE

<p>The default Recent Posts widget is exceptionally basic. I always find myself in need of a way to easily display a selection of posts from any combination post type or taxonomy. Hence, Flexible Posts Widget.</p>
<p>Flexible Posts Widget (FPW) is more than just a simple alternative to the default Recent Posts widget.  With many per-instance options it is highly customizable and allows advanced users to display the resulting posts virtually any way imaginable.</p>
<h4>Features & options</h4>
<ul>
<li>Customizable widget title</li>
<li>Get posts by post type(s) and/or taxonomy & term(s) or directly by a list of post IDs.</li>
<li>Control the number of posts displayed and the number of posts to offset.</li>
<li>Option to display the post feature image.</li>
<li>Select the post feature image size to display from existing image sizes: thumbnail, medium, large, post-thumbnail or any size defined by the current theme.</li>
<li>Order posts by: date, modified date, ID, title, menu order, random, Post ID Order; and sort posts: ascending or descending.</li>
<li>Each widget’s output can be customized by user-defined templates added to the current theme folder.</li>
<li>Multi Language support. Compatible with <a href="http://wpml.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">WPML</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/" rel="ugc">PolyLang</a> for sure. Not tested with other multi-language plugins, but it should work.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Plugin Hooks</h4>
<p>Flexible posts widget currently has two public hooks:</p>
<ul>
<li>Filter: <a href="https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/flexible-posts-widget/trunk/includes/class-fpw-widget.php#L191" rel="nofollow ugc"><code>dpe_fpw_args</code></a> allows filtering the query vars before submitting the widget posts query.</li>
<li>Filter: <a href="https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/flexible-posts-widget/trunk/includes/class-fpw-widget.php#L354" rel="nofollow ugc"><code>dpe_fpw_template_{$template_name}</code></a> filters the template file path used to display the widget output.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Future updates & feature requests list</h4>
<ul>
<li>Use search box instead of ID text field for post id’s</li>
<li>Shortcode functionality.</li>
<li>Get posts by Author.</li>
<li>Filter out the post currently being viewed.</li>
<li>Get posts from the same archive (term/post type/etc).</li>
<li>Limit results by a time period.</li>
</ul>


Flexible Posts Widget

This has got to be the most useful plugin of its kind.



Seriousl excellent plugin

An advanced posts display widget with many options. Display posts in your sidebars any way you'd like!

whiletrue

<p>“Categorized Tag Cloud” is a free plugin for WordPress, developed by the Whiletrue.it staff to generate a cloud with the website’s most used tags, in a sidebar widget.</p>
<p>The words inside the cloud are filtered by category, so you can better match your content by removing the unnecessary tag ids.</p>
<h4>Options</h4>
<p>The following options are customizable:</p>
<ul>
<li>category filters</li>
<li>number of tags shown</li>
<li>tag colors (fixed or random)</li>
<li>tag hover color</li>
<li>smallest and biggest font size</li>
</ul>
<h4>Reference</h4>
<p>For more informations:  <a href="https://www.whiletrue.it/categorized-tag-cloud-widget-wordpress/" title="www.whiletrue.it" rel="nofollow ugc">www.whiletrue.it</a></p>
<p>Do you like this plugin? Give a chance to our other works:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.whiletrue.it/it/really-simple-share-wordpress-plugin/" title="Good Old Share" rel="nofollow ugc">Good Old Share</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.whiletrue.it/most-and-least-read-posts-widget-for-wordpress/" title="Most and Least Read Posts" rel="nofollow ugc">Most and Least Read Posts</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.whiletrue.it/reading-time-for-wordpress/" title="Reading Time" rel="nofollow ugc">Reading Time</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Translators</h4>
<ul>
<li>Serbian translation by Ogi Djuraskovic ( firstsiteguide.com )</li>
</ul>


Categorized Tag Cloud

A cloud with the most used tags in a sidebar widget, filtered by post category.

Flexible Posts Widget vs Categorized Tag Cloud