The Plugin
With the Featured Post Widget you can put a certain post to the focus, by displaying it in one of your widget areas. You can decide, whether or not to display the post thumbnail and whether the post titel is on top or under that thumbnail. Style your widget in a different way to give it even more exposure.
Select the post to be displayed simply by choosing it from a dropdown menu.
History
We needed something to feature certain posts in the widget area of the theme, we are using. This is the result. With later versions, we added some languages and made the plugin more accurate. Now it will display also shortcodes if the content is chosen instead of an excerpt.
Current Version
The current version is 3.0 and has now a Dutch and a German translation as well. You can avoid dubble content by giving a backup post, that shows, when the main post in the widget is on a single post page. You can define a ‘read more’ link for the featured post, if needing one. Fromon his version, you choose the post and the backup post from a drop down menu and if you forget that, a random post will show up.
Change Log
3.0 Some streamlining done, more fool proof.
2.1 Minor bugfix, showing the excerpt.
2.0 The widget now supports a customizable ‘read more’ link.
1.9 Trying to get expandable textareas work.
1.8.2 Bugfix with backup post; plugin works now also with slugs.
1.8.1 Small bugfix with the backup post.
1.8 A second post can now be defined as a backup, that will show up, if the widget is showing on a single post page, showing the feaured post. Just to avoid doublettes.
1.7 Small changes in the handling that provide more accurate working.
1.6 Dutch translation added.
1.5 German translation added.
1.0 Initial release
Installation
To install the Featured Post Widget Plugin simply download it here, unzip the file and upload the folder named “post-feature-widget” into the /wp-content/plugins folder of your blog.
Once you have done that, simply activate “Featured Post Widget” in your plugin panel and customize the instances of your widgets, when you place them into your sidebars.
Screenshots
This is the plugin working with WP 3.1 and the 2010 theme.
Placing and customizing the widget
Donation
If you use the plugin and like it, we appreciate a donation. If you find the plugin useful and like it very much, we appreciate your feedback even more.
