Paul Annekov

<h4>Looking for maintainer. Write me to paul.annekov@gmail.com</h4>
Flexible Recent Posts (FRP) plugin gives you possibility to add widget to your blog with recent posts using user-defined template.
The main features are:
<ul>
<li>Template for each post in widget. You can write your HTML-template or overwrite default in widget form.</li>
<li>Shortcodes support in template. You can use built-in shortcodes to insert info related to current post in widget: <code>title</code>, <code>featured image</code>, <code>excerpt</code>, <code>date</code>, <code>permalink</code>, <code>author</code>, <code>comments</code>.</li>
<li>Restrict terms from which you want to display posts. Display posts from all terms or from selected only.</li>
<li>Number of posts to display. Set number of latest posts that will be displayed in widget.</li>
<li>All posts links. Select option to display link near the title or/and after all posts that will open selected posts category page. Set link title or custom link URL.</li>
</ul>
Useful links:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexible-recent-posts/other_notes/" rel="ugc">Template shortcodes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://frp.idea.informer.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Feature requests</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/tags/flexible-recent-posts?forum_id=10#postform" rel="ugc">Bugs</a></li>
<li><a href="https://flattr.com/thing/646464" rel="nofollow ugc">Donate (Flattr)</a></li>
</ul>
Translators:
<ul>
<li>Russian (ru) – <a href="http://www.steelrat.info/en/" rel="nofollow ugc">Paul Annekov</a></li>
</ul>
Licenses
<ul>
<li>Uses <a href="http://www.fatcow.com/free-icons" rel="nofollow ugc">FatCow Icon Set</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/" rel="nofollow ugc">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Shortcodes</h3>
Plugin template system supports 5 shortcodes related to current widget post, that you can use in your template:
Title [frp_title]
Displays post title.
Example: <code><h4>[frp_title]</h4></code>
Excerpt [frp_excerpt length=””]
Displays post excerpt using <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_excerpt" title="Visit function reference page" rel="nofollow ugc">get_the_excerpt</a> function. 
You can specify excerpt length using <code>length</code> attribute. If not specified – default WordPress excerpt length used.
Example: <code><div class="excerpt">[frp_excerpt]</div></code>, <code>[frp_excerpt length="15"]</code>
Date [frp_date format=”F j, Y” time_since=”0″]
Displays post date. You can add <code>format</code> shortcode parameter to change date format. Read about format value <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Formatting_Date_and_Time" title="Visit customizing time and date reference page" rel="nofollow ugc">here</a>. 
Add <code>time_since</code> parameter with 1 as value to display amount of elapsed time: <code>30 seconds ago</code>, <code>5 minutes ago</code>, <code>12 hours ago</code>, <code>3 Jun</code>.
Example: <code><div class="date">[frp_date format="Y/m/d g:i:s A"]</div></code>, <code><div class="elapsed">[frp_date time_since="1"]</div></code>
Link [frp_link]
Displays post permalink.
Example: <code><a href="[frp_link]">read more</a></code>
Featured image [frp_thumbnail size=”32×32″]
Displays featured post image. Add <code>size</code> shortcode parameter to change image size. You can define size using WIDTHxHEIGHT as value or size name (built-in or defined in theme).
Examples: <code>[frp_thumbnail]</code>, <code>[frp_thumbnail size="thumbnail"]</code>, <code>[frp_thumbnail size="128x128"]</code>, <code>[frp_thumbnail size="full"]</code>
Author [frp_author link=”1″]
Displays name of the post’s author. Set <code>link</code> parameter to 0 if you want to disable link (author’s site) from author name.
Examples: <code>[frp_author]</code>, <code>[frp_author link="1"]</code>, <code>[frp_author link="0"]</code>
Comments [frp_comments no_text=”1″]
Displays the number of comments. Set <code>no_text</code> parameter to 1 if you want to disable comment text (just “23” instead of “23 Comments”).
Examples: <code>[frp_comments]</code>, <code>[frp_comments no_text="1"]</code>, <code>[frp_comments no_text="0"]</code>

Flexible Recent Posts

Displays recent posts using flexible template system. Define template for each post entry, set needed taxonomy and much more.

pjgalbraith

An advanced version of the WordPress Recent Posts widget allowing increased customization.
Features Include:
<ul>
<li>Display post thumbnails, with customizable size.</li>
<li>Display post excerpt, author, comment count, and more. </li>
<li>Provides options to trim the number of characters in the title and excerpt.</li>
<li>Override the post order to order by; date modified, title, post ID, random, comment count etc.</li>
<li>Exclude or include specific posts, authors, tags, or categories.</li>
<li>Also includes a simple template parser so you can override the default output making custom styling easy.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Documentation</h3>
See documentation at http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/08/recent-posts-plus/

Flexible Recent Posts vs Recent Posts Plus