How to add Featured Posts Widget in wordpress using List Category Posts plugin

How to add Featured Posts Widget in wordpress using List Category Posts plugin

Introduction

In this post, I’m going to show you how to add a Featured Posts widget to your WordPress using List Category Posts plugin.

1. Create a category for featured posts

Some people on the internet implement the featured posts functionality by adding a custom field to posts, marking if a post is featured or not. This method requires no coding but still makes you do some “code pasting”, which may sounds a little bit “scary” to some WordPress users.

While there’s nothing wrong with that approach, I myself prefer using a special category for marking a post as featured. I name my category Featured Posts but you can choose whatever name that works for you.

2. Install List Category Posts plugin

  • In your WordPress back-end menu, go to Plugins > Add New.
  • Search for List Category Posts plugin by Fernando Briano.
  • Activate the plugin.

3. Drag the plugin to your website

  • In your WordPress back-end menu, go to Appearance > Widgets.
  • List Category Posts widget should now available for you to select.
  • Drag that widget to wherever you want on your website. In the following screenshot, I dragged it to my Sidebar.

4. Configure the widget

  • Extend the widget you’ve just dragged in. You should see a list of configurations for that widget.
  • Input the title you want to display on the website for your widget. For me, I use “Featured Posts“.
  • Select the category of the posts you want to display for your widget. For me, I choose “Featured Posts” category that I created in Step 1.
    • If you cannot see some of your categories in the drop-down list, it may be because there aren’t any posts in those categories yet. Try adding a post to the category you want and retry.
  • Select the number of posts you want to display in the widget.
  • For now, you can fill in only these 3 options and  keep the others default.
  • Click Save and you’re done.

5. Check your website for the featured posts

The widget should now appear on your front-end.

Bonus tips

  • You can add multiple instances of this widget on your website can configure them differently. For example, you can add another one for Editor’s Pick at the footer.
  • You can add this plugin as short-code inside of your posts to insert a list of posts like this: [catlist id=1 numberposts=10]. Take a look at this video for more information.
  • For full documentation on the plugin, check out the official wiki here.

 

Conclusion

Hope this can help you! Do you have any other tips? Let me know in the comment! 😀

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