webmaric

<p>There are many plugins for adding recent posts in sidebar, I know… But this is my version. Its easy to use and has all the right settings.</p>
<p>For instance, you can choose posts from specific categories, number of posts, thumbnail size, number of words in excerpt…</p>
<h4>Technical support</h4>
<p>Dear users, this plugin is available for free download. If you have any questions or recommendations regarding the functionality of this plugin (existing options, new options, current issues), please feel free to contact me. I speak serbian and english.<br />
If you notice any bugs in the plugin, you can notify me about it and we’ll investigate and fix the issue then. Please don’t hesitate to contact me.</p>


SidePost

To add recent posts in sidebar, with thumbnails, from specific categories...

pjgalbraith

<p>An advanced version of the WordPress Recent Posts widget allowing increased customization.</p>
<p>Features Include:</p>
<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>
<p>See documentation at http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/08/recent-posts-plus/</p>


SidePost vs Recent Posts Plus