Description
Let’s face it: WordPress’ default Recent Posts widget does the job as promised but it’s not very flexible. Things like excluding certain entries from the list or displaying recent posts by category can’t be done with the stock Recent Posts widget. Therefore, let me introduce Recently.
Recently is a WordPress widget that displays your site’s most recent posts. And it doesn’t stop there:
Main Features
- Multiple Recently lists – That is, you can have several Recently lists on your blog – each with its own settings!
- Thumbnails! – Display a thumbnail of your recent posts! (see the FAQ section for more details.)
- Custom Post-type support – Want to show other stuff than just posts and pages, eg. Recent Products? You can!
- Taxonomy filtering – List recent posts filtered by categories, tags, or custom taxonomies!
- Use your own layout! – Recently is flexible enough to let you customize the look and feel of your recent posts list! (see customizing Recently’s HTML markup and How to style Recently for more.)
- WordPress Multisite support – Each site on the network can have its own recent posts list!
- Localization – Translate Recently to your own language (See translating Recently into your language for more info).
- Polylang/WPML 3.2+ support – Show the translated version of your recent posts!
- WordPress Popular Posts / WP-PostViews / Top 10 support: – Display the views count of your recent posts!
- WP-PostRatings support. Show your visitors how your readers are rating your posts!
PSA: do not use the classic Recently widget with the new Widgets screen!
The classic Recently widget doesn’t work very well / at all with the new Widgets screen introduced with WordPress 5.8.
This new Widgets screen expects WordPress blocks instead of regular WordPress widgets. If you’re using the Recently widget on your block-based Widgets screen please replace it with the Recently block.
Support the Project!
If you’d like to support my work and efforts to creating and maintaining more open source projects your donations and messages of support mean a lot!
Recently is now also on GitHub!
Screenshots
Widgets Control Panel. 
Recently Widget. 
Recently Widget with Cards theme. 
Recently Widget with Cardview theme. 
Recently Widget with Midnight theme. 
Recently Widget with Tiles theme. 
Recently Widget with Tiny theme.
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Recently
Installation
Please make sure your site meets the minimum requirements before proceeding.
Automatic installation
- Log in into your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins > Add New.
- In the “Search Plugins” field, type in Recently and hit Enter.
- Find the plugin in the search results list and click on the “Install Now” button.
Manual installation
- Download the plugin and extract its contents.
- Upload the
recentlyfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the Recently plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
Done! What’s next?
- Go to Appearance > Widgets, drag the Recently widget onto your sidebar, configure it, and when you’re done click on Save.
- If you have a caching plugin installed on your site you may need to adjust some settings to make sure Recently can work: Is Recently compatible with caching plugins? Also, if you’re using a JS minifying plugin you may need to add recently.min.js to its exclusion list (see Is Recently compatible with plugins that minify / bundle JavaScript code?)
Make sure to stop by the Wiki as well, you’ll find even more info there!
That’s it!
FAQ
The FAQ section has been moved here.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“Recently” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“Recently” has been translated into 2 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “Recently” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
4.2.0
If you’re using a page caching plugin it’s highly recommended to clear its cache after upgrading to this version.
- Improves compatibility with Autoptimize, LiteSpeed Cache, Polylang, Speed Optimizer, W3 Total Cache, and WP Rocket.
- Fixes an issue where your recent posts list may get stuck in the loading animation on macOS/iOS devices.
- Fixes PHP notice about textdomain being called incorrectly.
- Modernizes and cleans up Recently’s JS files.
- Improved CSP compatibility.
- Block: numeric fields use type=number now.
4.1.0
- Adds WebP / AVIF support.
- Fixes an issue where the excerpt would not be truncated as expected.
- Fixes an issue where the fallback thumbnail may revert to the stock one under certain conditions.
- Minor fixes and improvements.
4.0.3
If you’re using a page caching plugin it’s highly recommended to clear its cache after upgrading to this version.
If you’re using a JS minifying plugin you may need to add recently.min.js to its exclusion list (see FAQ).
- Min. required WordPress version is now 5.7.
- Improves PHP 8 support.
- Improves compatibility with XHTML WordPress themes.
- Query data caching feature has been removed as it’s now built-in into WordPress.
- Other minor enhancements.
4.0.2
- Fixes an issue where the excerpt would not be truncated at the expected length (props to dimalifragis!)
- Fixes a PHP warning related to the excerpt generator function (props to dimalifragis!)
- Updates dependencies.
4.0.1
- Fixes an issue where the excerpt may output broken HTML under some circumstances.
- Updated dependencies.
4.0.0
This release includes a couple of major changes so please review before updating.
- Minimum required PHP version is now 7.2.
- Minimum required WordPress version is now 5.3.
- Introduces Recently’s own block!
- Admin: only users with
edit_others_postscapability (usually Editors and Administrators) will be able to access certain areas of Recently’s dashboard. - Widgets: Users will no longer be able to add the “classic” widget to the block-based Widgets screen, only the Recently block.
- Fixes an issue where widget themes stored in child theme’s folder would not be recognized by the plugin.
- Security enhancements.
- Minor improvements and fixes.
See the Release notes for more details.