Soft crop Custom image size

Hi there!

Yes, WPP hard crops thumbnails when using the manual option. There’s no way to change that from the outside since it’s hardcoded into the plugin.

You have two options:

1. Add a new thumbnail size to your theme’s functions.php using the add_image_size() function. This would allow you to pick your custom image size from the widget without having to modify WPP’s code. After adding the new image size, you’ll also need to install & run the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin to recreate your thumbnails.
2. Edit the plugin (not recommended):

1. Go to Plugins > Editor and select WordPress Popular Posts from the dropdown.
2. Find this line (as of version 3.2.2) and change it to false.
3. Hit the Update file button to save changes.
4. Go to Settings > WordPress Popular Posts > Tools and clear WPP’s image cache so it can recreate the thumbnails again.

The second option isn’t recommended because the next time you update the plugin all changes made to its files will be lost (WordPress replaces all plugin files with the new ones during the process). If you decide to go for the second option, please make sure to bookmark and /or save this modification somewhere for future reference.

Alright, just checked the screen capture you posted and indeed these arrows are being added by your current theme. I could tell you how to remove them, but for that you need to share your site’s URL.

Easy. Add this to your theme’s stylesheet (style.css):

.wpp-list li a {
  background-image: none!important;
}