Do you keep a simple blog, where you don’t define specific categories for your posts but simply let them all be uncategorized and use tags instead? Do you, like me, feel that all the categorizing stuff comes in the way of your content and your blog? Do you feel that keeping only one category seems superflous, but WordPress just forces you to? Then this plugin might be for you!
This plugin is mostly cosmetic, as it doesn’t change or actually remove any categories, but hides any options to change them, so all posts are in fact put in the default category (usually “Uncategorized”). This currently includes the category section on the edit pages and the “Manage categories” section on the admin pages. Published posts will not mention categories, and the Category widget has been removed.
As it doesn’t actually remove the categories or modify any files, this plugin will not affect any other plugins’ usage of categories. This means “Uncategorized” will show up on statistic pages, etc.

No Categories

Simply disables the usage of categories in your WordPress blog.

Prasanna SP

This plugin creates a new widget which lets you show a list of recent posts based on categories or tags. This is a must have plugin if you want to exclude some categories in recent posts widget or if you want to show recent posts based on tags. By default the wordpress recent posts widget shows a posts from all category. But this plugin gives you more power to customize your recent posts widget. You can also display post date in the widget.
See the live action of this plugin on <a href="http://demo.prasannasp.net/custom-recent-posts-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">demo site</a> or on Kennneth John Odle’s <a href="http://blog.kjodle.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">blog</a>.
Have any questions or suggestions? Create a thread in the <a href="http://forum.prasannasp.net/forum/plugin-support/custom-recent-posts-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">support forum</a>.
Visit <a href="http://www.prasannasp.net/wordpress-plugins/" rel="nofollow ugc">this page</a> for more WordPress Plugins from the developer.
A special thanks to <a href="http://blog.kjodle.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">Ken</a> and <a href="http://www.joshlobe.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Josh</a> for testing the code.

Custom Recent Posts Widget

A widget to show recent posts list based on categories or tags

No Categories vs Custom Recent Posts Widget