<p>This is a widget that displays a list of random pages/posts on your widgetized sidebar. The widget displays random posts and pages in sidebar. This increases the number of indexed pages and gives users an interesting way to browse your site.</p>
<p>Benefits:</p>
<ul>
<li>Give visitors a fun way to browse your site.</li>
<li>Get more pages of your site indexed.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Questions, Comments and feature suggestions</strong></p>
<p>Please leave questions and comments on my <a href="http://financequestionsblog.com/random-pages-widget" rel="nofollow ugc">plugin page</a></p>
<p>If you like this plugin please give me a good rating!  I ask for no donations.  If you’d like to donate, donate to wordpress.org.</p>
<h3>Configuration</h3>
<ul>
<li>Widget title: the title of the widget</li>
<li>Pages Or Posts: display random pages or random posts or both</li>
<li>List types: ul for bulleted list, p for paragraph, br for paragraph with line breaks</li>
<li>Page count: Number of random pages you would like to be displayed</li>
</ul>


Random Pages Widget

Displays random posts and pages in sidebar. This increases the number of indexed pages and gives users an interesting way to browse your site.

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!

Random Pages Widget vs Flexible Posts Widget