Whenever a visitor or user lands on your blog post, you must try every possible way to engage them and drive the user to other relevant and valuable content. Displaying recent posts is a wonderful way to do this on WordPress.
It’s one of the most basic things that allow you to implement internal linking. Recent posts can be displayed on many parts of your website. You can display them whether in the sidebar, at the end of your blog post, or in the footer widget area.
Today, we will show you several easiest ways how to display recent posts in WordPress with a detailed step-by-step guide. Get started!
Why Would You Want to Display Recent Posts in WordPress?
Displaying recent posts in WordPress can offer numerous benefits to enhance user experience and your website performance at once. Let’s take a quick look at some of these key benefits of displaying recent posts on your website.
a. Improve User Engagement
Numerous studies have revealed that over 55% of people don’t love to stay on web posts for more than 15 seconds. By showcasing recent posts, you can provide visitors with quick access to fresh content, encouraging them to explore further.
b. Enhance User Experience
Visitors often look for the latest information on desired topics after landing on a website. Displaying recent posts can make it easy for them to find up-to-date and relevant content, improving user experience.
c. SEO Benefits
As already said once, displaying recent posts is a helpful way to create internal links between various posts. This can be beneficial in leveraging SEO benefits. It also signals Google that you are actively managing your content.
d. Establish Authority
WordPress allows you to showcase recent posts based on tags and categories. When users see that you have published a good number of posts on the same topics, it signals to them that you have authority in particular fields.
How to Display Recent Posts in WordPress: 6 Easy Ways
Depending on where you want to show the recent posts, there are quite a few ways to display recent posts on your WordPress website. However, today we will talk about six of the easiest ways to display recent posts on your website. These ways will help you show recent posts pretty much everywhere on your website.
- Use Gutenberg Block to Display Recent Posts
- Use the WordPress Recent Posts Widget
- Display Recent Posts Using a Plugin
- Display Recent Posts Using a Shortcode
- Show Recent Posts Using The Elementor Post Carousel Widget
- Use the Custom Recent Posts Block of Getwid
So now, let’s begin with the first way to show recent posts on your website.
Method 01: Use Gutenberg Block to Display Recent Posts
Gutenberg has a built-in block, named the Latest Posts block, to display recent posts on your website. With the help of the block, you can display your recent posts inside any pages or posts.
To do this just click on the Plus (+) button to insert a block and then search for ‘Latest Posts‘.
Once you add the block, there are a lot of settings to customize it. Following are some of the things you can do.
- You can show only the headlines or a part of the contents inside (you can even set how many words you want to display).
- You can display author’s name and post date as well.
- You can also show the feature images of the posts.
- You can show posts of only selected categories.
- Last but not least, you can set exactly how many posts you want to display.
Clearly, Gutenberg’s easy-to-use block itself has more than enough options to fulfill your needs when it comes to displaying recent posts.
Use the WordPress Recent Posts Widget
Let’s talk about another default way to display recent posts on your website. The way we will talk about now is perhaps the most effortless way to show recent posts on WordPress websites. Yes, we are talking about the WordPress widget for recent posts.
It lets you add recent posts on your sidebar, footer, or simply any place where WordPress lets you add a widget. The process is simple and just like adding any other widget.
To use the WordPress recent posts widget, follow the below process –
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets.
Step 2: Now drag and drop the Recent Posts widget to any place you want.
Step 3: Once you click on the recent posts widget, you will be able to add the name of the widget and how many posts you want to show.
That’s pretty much all you can do with the default recent posts widget. So, if the default way is not featureful enough for you, you can also opt for a third-party plugin to display recent posts. Below is how you can do that.
Method 03: Display Recent Posts Using a Plugin
If you think you need an alternative to the default ways to display recent posts, there are enough plugins on WordPress repository to make you confused.
However, for our tutorial, we chose to use one of the finest plugins to display recent posts. Developed by Kybernetic Services, the plugin is called Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnails. The interesting thing is that this plugin is built on top of the default Recent Posts widgets and simply adds features to that. Let’s now move on to the tutorial.
Step 1: First, log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New.
Step 2: Now search with the term Recent Posts. Once you find the desired plugin, please install and activate it.
Step 3: Once you activate the plugin, navigate to Appearance > Widgets. Here, you will now find an option called Recent Posts With Thumbnails.
Step 4: Drag the widget to the Sidebar, Footer, or anywhere you need. Now click on it, and you will find a lot of options to customize how your recent posts will show and look.
Step 4: Once you are done tweaking the options, click on Save.
While this plugin offers a lot of options, it doesn’t actually let you add the widget anywhere you want. You can only add the widget to the default set of places for the widget. So you must rely on the Gutenberg block to display the Recent Posts anywhere you want.
But what if you don’t use Gutenberg and use Classic Editor instead?
Method 04: Display Recent Posts Using a Shortcode
This method is for you if you (i) still use the Classic Editor, (ii) but still need options like Gutenberg’s Latest Posts block.
For this, we will need a plugin as well. In our case, we will use a plugin called Latest Post Shortcode by Iulia Cazan. The plugin allows you to add shortcodes inside your posts or pages to display recent posts. Let’s see how it works.
Step 1: Install the plugin following the steps we already mentioned above.
Step 2: Create a new post/page or enter any post/page that already exists. Now paste the following line of shortcode into the classic editor.
[latest-selected-content limit="4" type="post" display="title,content-small" chrlimit="50" image="full" elements="0" css="two-columns" taxonomy="category" term="samples" orderby="dateA"]
You can edit the code as you want. Like changing the content limit, chart limit (which resembles how many characters you want to display), image size, category, and sorting, among other stuff.
You can use the shortcode as much as you want, wherever you want. It works almost like the Gutenberg Latest Post while missing some features.
Method 05: Show Recent Posts Using The Elementor Post Carousel Widget
Elementor is a popular drag-and-drop page builder plugin. If you have been using WordPress for at least for couple of months, you might have heard of Elementor minimum once. Again, it might be that your site is already designed with Elementor.
We’ll now show you how to showcase recent posts on your blog posts using the plugin. You need to install the HappyAddons Lite and HappyAddons Pro plugins. Once you have them on your site, follow the below steps.
Step 01: Select an area for showing the recent posts.
Step 02: Find the Post Carousel widget. Drag and drop it on the desired area.
Step 03: Expand the Query section. Select Date next to the option Order By. This will showcase your recent posts based on dates.
Step 04: Open the dropdown list next to the option Date. You’ll get seven options on the list. By selecting the time range on the list, you can define how recent posts you want to show web visitors.
Method 06: Use the Custom Recent Posts Block of Getwid
Getwid is a Gutenberg block plugin. It has 40+ custom blocks for the Gutenberg editor by which you can craft and display interactive content on your website. Getwid has a Recent Posts block. Install and activate the plugin first. Then, follow the steps explained below.
Step 01: Find and add the Recent Posts block to your desired post/page. This will automatically display several recent posts on your web screen.
Step 02: Come to the Settings section on the right sidebar. You may display the posts in the grid or list format. The Settings section will provide you with many other options, like column, title, tag, image size, display date, categories, etc.
Configure them as you want. Thus, you can showcase recent posts on your other blog posts and even pages following the same way.
Wrapping Up
It’s a game of keeping your audience engaged. Either you do it, or your competitor will do so. Displaying recent posts on your pages can be an excellent way to keep your audience on your website for a longer period of time.
In this post, we have presented six easy ways to display recent posts on WordPress sites. A couple of them require the help of plugins, while a couple of them don’t. Choose one that you think is most preferable to you, and it will surely help keep your audience hooked on your website.
Check out How to Display Estimated Post Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts Automatically!
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![Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner, and people are waiting for these festivals to grab the best product deals. That is why giving an attractive look to your website during this festive season is very necessary. But, creating a whole new landing page might be difficult in a short period of time. Don't worry. By using Happy Elementor Addons Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing Page templates, you can easily develop a whole new landing page in a few minutes. In this today's blog, we are going to show how to boost your website design using HappyAddons templates during this festival season. Before that, we'll talk a bit about these two festivals and why they are important to online business communities. What are Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Black Friday is the immediate following of the famous Thanksgiving day. This is when people start shopping to celebrate the Christmas festival. Since the late 1980s, retail sales on this day have constantly been suppressing the past volumes. See the graph below. Source: Salecycle.com The first Monday following Thanksgiving day each year is called Cyber Monday. It was first introduced in 2005 by the USA National Retail Federation to encourage people to buy online. Though this festival originated in the USA, it is celebrated globally today. See the stats below. Source: Salecycle.com It indicates customers' buying behavior around this day is growing up over time. Many customers today keep a budget to buy products on these two days. So, why won’t you prepare a Cyber Monday landing page if you have an online store? Importance of Designing Landing Pages for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Festival Having a well-design website is one of the major checklists if you are running an online business. Most importantly, you have to make sure that your website remains up-to-date to boost your sales. That is why you need to redesign your website or make a new landing page during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday festivals. Because most online product & service-based businesses promote special deals during these two festivals. Here are some remarkable ways dedicated landing pages during these festivals can positively impact the performance of your online business. Boosts your product salesIncreases conversion rateOpportunity to collect potential email leadsGrabs users' attention toward your siteReduces bounce rateIncreases website visitors. Elementor Black Friday New Seasonal Kit is Already Here! Source: Elementor To make this Black Friday more enjoyable, Elementor has launched a New Seasonal Kit that includes landing pages, sections, pop-ups, and vector assets. All these design elements are made by the Elementor team so that one can easily use them on their website to ensure more sales and conversions. New Elementor Black Friday Seasonal Kit offers: 3 Landing pages6 Sections 6 Popups A collection of stickers & animations You can only get these ready-made Black Friday landing pages and sections if you have Installed Elementor Pro on your site. However, if you are looking for templates that are outside of the box, you can go with Happy Addons, the fastest Elementor Addons on the market. It's very easy to use, flexible and has tons of advanced features and widgets that can ease your website design journey. Also, you'll get several festival landing page templates & blocks. Moreover, you can use free Black Friday and Cyber Monday design blocks and templates to decorate your site. Most importantly, these templates and blocks are easy to customize and can be used for multiple purposes. Now let's see how you can use the Happy Addons templates to design your website according to the Black Friday theme. Pre-Requisites to Use HappyAddons Templates to Design Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing Pages You must have the following plugins installed on your site to get access to the HappyAddons Template library. Make sure you’ve installed and activated the Happy Addons Free & Premium version of your website. Elementor (Free)Happy Addons (Free)Happy Addons Pro If you are new to Elementor, check this Step By Step Guide For Beginners. If you want to explore the readymade templates of HappyAddons before installing these plugins, you may visit by clicking on the button below. Check out Happy Addons Templates How to Design Black Friday Landing Page on Your Website Once you have the plugins (mentioned above) installed, your website is ready to follow the tutorial guide explained in this section. Get ready now! Step 1: Open a New Page with Elementor Create a new page or open the existing page with Elementor. Next, you have to select the Elementor Canvas option.Unless you select Elementor Canvas, you may watch the header, footer, and unnecessary other texts on the page. These might be irritating to you.Once you open the page with Elementor Canvas, your page will be completely clean. Watch the video below on how to do it. Step 02: Go to HappyAddons Library Click on the HappyAddons Library Icon. It will open up a modal popup. Here you'll find numerous stunning premade Blocks and Pages created by the Happy Addons team. Kindly explore them to create a list of your favorite items. Step 03: Import a HappyAddons Black Friday Template Go to the Page tab on the modal popup.Select Black Friday from the left-side filter option.You will several good-looking templates on your screen.Take your cursor on the one you like and hit on the INSERT button. Wait for a while to finish the installation process. You will get the template on your screen with editable sections and options. Step 04: Set the Black Friday Campaign Deadline A deadline creates a sense of urgency in customers' minds. So, better if you add a deadline section on the page to show your Black Friday deals. The good thing is that if you select the template as we did, you will automatically get a deadline or countdown option. You have to customize it as you want. Step 05: Show Image Carousel Slider on Your Black Friday Landing Page Using the Image Carousel, you can slide show demonstrating discounts on your product categories. Drag and drop the Image Carousel widget on any landing page section. Next, from the Elementor panel, you can add photos and text to the widget. Do it accordingly. Thus, you can add more sections and options on the landing page. Hope you can do it yourself. Step 06: Make the Black Friday Landing Page Mobile Responsive Making a web page mobile responsive with Elementor is super easy. You'll get the mobile responsive option on the Elementor footer section. Clicking on it will open up the option to view your landing page on different device screens. We have explained the process in the video below. Note: Don't delete any widget or section while customizing your landing page for any particular device. Because if you delete a widget or section on any device screen, it will also be applied on other devices. However, you may change their position or alignment or hide them. It won't make any impact on other devices. Step 07: Final Preview of Our Landing Page Here is the final interface of our Elementor Black Friday landing page that we've designed using the Happy Addons' ready-made Template. Get Happy Addons to Add a Black Friday Theme Landing Page on Your Website How to Design Cyber Monday Landing Page on Your Website You will require the same prerequisites (Elementor and HappyAddons Plugins) to design the Cyber Monday landing page on your website. Hope you have them ready on your website. Now, let's get into the tutorial part. Step 01: Import a Cyber Monday Readymade Landing Page Template Go to the HappyAddons Template library.Choose the Cyber Monday template you like.Click on the INSERT button. Wait for a while to finish the installation process. You'll get a page design like the following image below. Step 02: Edit Different Sections of the Page In the first tutorial, you saw the deadline/countdown option was already embedded in the template. But this template doesn't have it. So, you can bring it to your page? Very simple. Create a new section by clicking on the plus icon.Type Countdown on the Elementor search bar.Drag and drop the widget on the section. Customize the Countdown section from the Content and Style tabs of the Elementor panel. Using the Heading widget, we have added the FLASH DEALS text next to the countdown to make it more meaningful. Thus, you can use other exciting widgets on the template to make your landing page super gorgeous. Step 03: Promote Products on the Landing Page Promotional landing pages usually include a section to showcase some hot-selling products to generate instant sales. Using the Image and Button widgets, we have created this section under the FLASH DEALS.You may customize it more as you wish. Step 04: Make it Mobile Responsive We already showed you the process in the first tutorial on making a mobile web landing page responsive. Hope you can do it here as well, following the same guideline. Click on the Responsive Mode icon and do the rest yourself. Bonus: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing Page Design Key Considerations Whenever you design a landing page, you need to consider why you need to design this page and what elements they should keep on the page. Because if you are not adding all the necessary features to your page, it will not serve its purpose. This is why you need to focus on a few things before designing your Black Friday landing page. Here are some points you must consider in designing Black Friday and Cyber Monday landing pages. Add Black Friday textSet deals deadlineShow your best-discounted productsAdd coupon code Focus on responsive page designMake your page visually appealingImprove your page user experience or page structureSet a proper website navigation FAQ on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing Page Design Now, we'll answer some common questions on Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing page designs commonly found online. How much does it cost to design a landing page?The cost of designing a landing page varies depending on the complexity of the design, the level of customization required, and whom to hire for the page. A simple landing page can be designed for as little as $25, while a more complex design with multiple customizations can cost upwards of $2,00.However, if you have Elementor and HappyAddons installed, you can design unlimited landing pages at a minimal cost. But like any other tool, you must have a kind of enterprise on them. As they are drag-and-drop builders and their numerous tutorials and documentation are available, they won't take you more than a month to be used to. Check out some wonderful YouTube tutorials on these two plugins. Hope you will enjoy them.How many hours does it take to design a landing page?It mainly depends on the level of design complexity and your web design skill. However, both in Elementor and HappyAddons, you will get countless readymade templates and block sections. You can design a beautiful landing page in 3-5 hours by making a proper combination of them.Can I design Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing pages with Elementor and HappyAddons free versions?Surely, you can design Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing pages with Elementor and HappyAddons free versions. But only with the pro versions, you can't add too many exciting features to your pages. For example, free versions will give you access to only a limited number of readymade templates.If you are just a beginner-level designer, free versions are enough. But if you are a professional designer or have a web designing agency, pro versions are a must. Are You Ready To Design Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Landing Page? Customers look forward to this kind of occasion to buy their favorite products at a minimum price. Naturally, they are drawn to websites that look good and give a festive vibe. That is why adding a Black Friday and Cyber Monday landing page during the festival season will give you an extra edge over the competitors. The above guide shows how to design your Elementor Black Friday Landing page using the Happy Addons' Black Friday Templates and how it can help boost your holiday sales. So if you have any queries regarding this blog, you can comment on us in the below box. If you like this post, then share it on your social channel. Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter. Also, follow our Facebook and Twitter channels for regular updates. Subscribe to our newsletter Get latest news & updates on Elementor [yikes-mailchimp form="1"] ":36560} /--](https://happyaddons.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/How-to-Design-Black-Friday-and-Cyber-Monday-Landing-Page-300x188.png)
8 Responses
You have written an excellent article! In this article, you have discussed how to display recent posts In WordPress. This article is very important for a WordPress blogger. I hope WordPress bloggers can learn a lot from this article.
Thank you Douglas. We have many more great articles, so do check them out as well. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter.
Cheers.
Thank you for this tutorial!
You are very welcome, Nardi. Glad you liked it. You can also give a read to our other articles which might also interest you.
Cheers.
Is there any way to show the related post in between the blog post, I mean somewhere middle of the post, as per choice.
Hi Andy,
Gobinda here from team HappyAddons.
By default, it’s not possible as Elementor pulls the entire blog with the post blog widget. But you can manage it by using a recent post block or the shortcode of a recent post blog plugin. Just add the block or shortcode where you want to place the shortcode or block. It will be displayed in the frontend as it is.
Thanks and regards,
Gobinda
Team HappyAddons.
Great article! Thanks for the tips to display recent posts.
Thanks a lot John for stopping by and share your thoughts with us.
Stay connected.
Regards,
Gobinda
Team HappyAddons.