graysea

Recent & Featured Posts Widget adds a list of recent posts or posts of your choosing with thumbnail images, post titles, dates, times, and excerpts.
Features:
<ul>
<li>Excerpt Length. Change the number of words in the post excerpt.</li>
<li>Excerpt Display. Show the excerpt as a dropdown when someone hovers over a section or display the excerpt directly on the page.</li>
<li>CSS Modification. Modify certain CSS values including image width, text position, and border.</li>
<li>Featured Posts. Don’t want to show recent posts? Enter a list of post IDs. The number of posts shown will depend on the total number of IDs.</li>
<li>Thumbnail Images. Choose to show featured image, or the oldest image attached to a post is shown by default.</li>
<li>Images of your Choosing. Enter a list of image IDs to replace the default images. Images are shown in the order listed.</li>
<li>Date and Time. Show or hide the post date and/or time. Choose a separator that goes between date and time.</li>
<li>Include Sticky Posts. If you include sticky posts, an extra post is added. I.e. if the ‘Number of posts to show’ is 5 and you select ‘Include Sticky Posts’, 6 posts will be shown.</li>
<li>Rectangular or Circular Image.</li>
</ul>

Recent & Featured Posts Widget

Display recent posts or manually selected posts with thumbnail images. Show the excerpt directly on the page or as a dropdown.

linkhousemedia

This plugin was initially designed as a theme function but we thought it might come in handy for someone else. It is designed to use the following plugins:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/" rel="ugc">Custom Post Type UI</a></li>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/taxonomy-images/" rel="ugc">Taxonomy Images</a></li>
</ul>
Of course you can create your own custom post types and taxonomies but the Custom Post Type UI plugin makes very light work of it.
The plugin creates a widget for adding featured posts. There are other plugins that do this but Featured Custom Posts allows for custom post types and taxonomies. It was created to show featured products that were created as custom post types.
Features
<ul>
<li>Select number of posts to display (default: 10)</li>
<li>Post Type</li>
<li>Custom Taxonomy</li>
<li>Custom Taxonomy Term</li>
</ul>
New In Version 1.1
<ul>
<li>Added Permalink Base for post URL (Defaults to post’s GUID)</li>
<li>Added Post Title as the link text if Taxonomy Images plugin isn’t present</li>
</ul>
Example Usage
Custom Post Type: “products” 
Taxonomy: “product-tags” 
Taxonomy Term: “featured”
In this example our custom post type of “products” allows us to add products in a similar way to posts. Now with our custom taxonomy of “product-tags” we can tag our products with the tag “featured”. Plug this information into the widget via the wp-admin area and you’re all set!
Future Updates
<ul>
<li>Allow for multiple taxonomy terms</li>
<li>Add thumbnail size support</li>
</ul>

Featured Custom Posts Widget

Widget that allows custom post types and taxonomies to be displayed.  Works well with Custom Post Type UI and Taxonomy Images plugins.

Recent & Featured Posts Widget vs Featured Custom Posts Widget