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! 😀