Recent Posts Not Working Properly

[Mark Carter]

Hi There,

I have installed the plugin Recent Posts Plus and used the coding that you suggested in the plugin. At least I think I have.

WP_Query Options
{“cat”: “1,2,3″}

Widget Output Template

[Sushil Adhikari]

Make sure the setting for how many posts to show is set to more than 2. Also make sure your category ID’s in the Query Options have the right category ID’s. Plus, make sure the categories being listed, have more than 2 posts (hence checking the category ID’s).

[Mark Carter]

Ok… so if I drop the query options and leave them blank then the latest 5 posts will show up. I think I get it. That’s really what I want.

The other thing that’s happening is that it’s shrinking the featured image down to fit its thumbnail size. It’s resulting in too small of an image. Is there some way to create a custom image for this or use a different image as default?

[Sushil Adhikari]

You can try it without the query options, but I generally like to add in the categories I want to display posts from.

As for the image, are you referring to the recent posts widget? IF so, simply change the thumbnail size setting on the widget.

[Mark Carter]

I’m using the Recent Posts Plus plugin. I think it’s the one you recommended, do I have the wrong one? http://www.pjgalbraith.com/2011/08/recent-posts-plus/

I have the thumbnail set to 80 px x 80 px. It uses the featured image. I’ve been creating the featured images as 700px x 200px. When the featured image gets used in the thumbnail, the entire image gets scaled to 80 px x 23 px. It looks like a thin ribbon and I’d rather have the 80 x 80 square. I was wondering if there was any way to control this scale to size behavior that you are aware of or if I need to look for another plugin that allows more customization? If I need to use another plugin, do you or does someone else have any suggestions?

[Sushil Adhikari]

It scales the image with a relative size and I believe it does it with the width first and then the height will be relative to the width. For it to happen what you want, it means the plugin needs to have the ability to do a “crop” of the featured image. I’m not sure it can do that, although it would be interesting if it could. Because this is a third party plugin, you will need to contact their developer for support on this one. Perhaps they might have a thumbnail solution for you…if they do, let me know because it would be a nice feature for it. Otherwise, you may need to find another thumbnail based recent post plugin, or the other option is to increase the height of your original featured image.

[Mark Carter]

Thanks! I thought that might be the case. I’ll let you know if I find out something from the developer.

[Author]

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