Johan van der Wijk

The Recent Posts Widget Plus plugin allows you to display a list of the most recent posts from all or a specific category or tag. It not only shows the post title, but also an excerpt of the post.

Crazy Girl

This WordPress Widget allows you to display the recent posts of your blogroll links via RSS Feeds as a sidebar widget. 
The Plugin works without Javascript and without AJAX. It uses the WordPress standard links database and honors the 
visible and target settings as defined for each link (private links are not shown, links are displayed in the same or 
in a new window as specified). The Plugin is easy to install, the Widget is simple to use and highly customizable. 
You can simply switch on / off, select or type in the various configurations and settings.
You can configure this Widget in the WordPress Appearance Widgets SubPanel as follows:
<ul>
<li>add an own title to the sidebar widget</li>
<li>define how many items you want to display </li>
<li>choose the link category of the items (all links or one of your link categories)</li>
<li>select the item order (link name ascending, link name descending, link id ascending, link id descending, random order)</li>
<li>show the images entered to the respective links or let the plugin generate website thumbnails (via m-software.de) – NOT RECOMMENDED, as this service does not work properly anymore!</li>
<li>define the image size</li>
<li>show blogroll links</li>
<li>add the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute to the blogroll links</li>
<li>define how many feed post links you want to display</li>
<li>choose if you want to shorten the feed post link text and define the length in characters</li>
<li>add the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute to the feed post links</li>
<li>show feed post excerpts</li>
<li>define how many characters of the feed post excerpt you want to display</li>
</ul>
Before using the Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds make sure, that you have entered the right RSS Addresses to your links in the Links 
Subpanel. Otherwise this Plugin will not work correctly. No item is shown when no RSS Address is entered! With this you 
have a further possibility to configure the Widget output. When you do not enter a RSS Address to a link, it will not be 
displayed in the Widget.
Alternative to the WordPress Appearance Widgets SubPanel you can add and configure the Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds directly 
in your theme file (e.g. sidebar.php). For details please see the installation tab.
Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds requires WordPress Version 2.8 or higher
<h4>Available Languages</h4>
<ul>
<li>German</li>
<li>English</li>
<li>Italian – Thanks to talksina</li>
<li>French – Thanks to <a href="http://maitremo.fr/" title="Maître Mô" rel="nofollow ugc">Maître Mô</a></li>
<li>Belorussian – Thanks to <a href="http://pc.de/" title="Marcis G." rel="nofollow ugc">Marcis G.</a></li>
<li>Bulgarian – Thanks to <a href="http://webhostinggeeks.com/" title="Web Geek" rel="nofollow ugc">Web Geek</a></li>
</ul>

Recent Posts Widget Plus vs Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds