Do you want to display your recent articles on WordPress?

Viewing recent articles helps users easily discover your new content and spend more time on your website.

You can add a list of your latest articles in your sidebar, after the end of your article, inside your content, in your widget area, or others.

In this article, we are going to show you how to display recent articles in WordPress using a variety of methods.

But, if you've never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog 

Then back to why we are here.

Why display recent articles in WordPress?

If you have had to run a WordPress blog or website for a long time, then you have a few older posts that get regular traffic from search engines and other sources.

Many of these users will see the information they are looking for and leave. Over 75% of these visitors will never see your website again. In order for users to return to your website, you need to make sure that they spend more time on it.

Discover more How to display recent articles in a specific category

One way to do this is to show them recent articles. This will help them discover more content on your website, and get them to spend more time on it. The more users view your pages, this will give you time to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter or make a purchase.

That being said, let's take a look at how to easily post recent articles on WordPress using several methods.

Method 1. Use WordPress's Latest Posts Gutenberg Block

The WordPress Gutenberg editor has a block that allows you to display your articles recent. You can easily add this to any article or page on your website.

To use this block, just edit the post where you want to display recent posts. On the article editing screen, you must add the block "Recent ArticlesTo the content area.

How to view recent WordPress blogpascher posts

There are several ways that you can configure this block. By default, it just displays article titles, but you can easily customize it.

For example, you can toggle this content to the right side. This lets you choose to add content or an article snippet next to the title.

You can also customize the length of the snippet which defaults to 55 words, but you can choose any value between 10 and 100 words.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 1 e1589131998821

If you want, you can display the date of the article. It will appear just below the title.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 2 e1589132260799

You can also choose exactly how your articles will appear. You can order them differently from the default 'From the most recent to the oldest', and you can only view the latest articles from a specific category.

See also our guide on How to add a navigation menu to a WordPress page

From the settings panel, you can also choose the number of items displayed. By default, the block displays 5 articles, but you can display any number between 1 and 100 articles.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 3

You can also display your recent articles in a column grid rather than a list.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 4

You can customize the grid by adding the featured image of your articles, resize them or even align them.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 5

Then publish your article and find out how this method works.

Method 2. Use the WordPress widget for recent articles 

What to do if you want to display a list of your latest articles in your sidebar instead of a page

WordPress comes with a default widget to display recent articles on the sidebar of your website or any widget area.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance »Widgets and add the widget 'Recent Article'to your sidebar.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 6

This widget doesn't offer a lot of options. You can give the widget a title, choose whether or not to display the dates of the articles, and add the number of articles you want to display.

Once you are done, click on the 'Save'to save the widget settings.

Then Submit your article and see this method in action.

Method 3. Use the Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails plugin

The built-in widget that we mentioned above is quite limited.

What if you want to display thumbnails and snippets on your recent articles?

What if you want to display only articles from a specific category in your sidebar?

Well, that's when the Recents Posts Widget With Thumbnails plugin becomes useful. It does a lot more than just thumbnails, and it's free.

First, you will need to install and activate the WordPress Plugin Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails. If you've ever done it, discover our step by step guide to install a plugin.

Then go to  Appearance »Widgets where you should see the "Recent Posts With Thumbnails" widget.

You need to add it to your sidebar or another widget area.

How to view recent WordPress posts blogpascher 7

This widget comes with lots of options. It gives you full control over how you want to display recent articles on your WordPress website.

You can also view snippets, view articles from specific categories, ignore some, display articles randomly, and more.

Discover more How to create a slideshow with Slider Revolution on WordPress

When you're done, don't forget to click the button Save to save your settings.

You can now visit your website to see how your list of recent articles appears.

Method 4. Display recent articles using a shortcode

Using the block 'Recent ArticlesThis is definitely the easiest way to list recent posts in your posts and pages. However, if you have chosen to disable the Gutenberg editor and keep the Classic editor, you can use shortcodes instead.

First, install and activate the plugin Rear display. It works perfectly, and there are no parameters to configure.

Just edit an article or page where you want to display your recent articles. Then use the shortcode. This plugin offers a whole range of parameters that you can use with the shortcode:

[display-posts]

Here are some examples of what you can do using this plugin.

Display 3 recent articles with thumbnails and extract:

[display-posts posts_per_page = "3" image_size = "thumbnail" include_excerpt = "true"]
Show recent pages instead of articles:
[display-posts posts_per_page = "3" post_type = "page"]
Change the title order instead of the date:
[display-posts posts_per_page = "3" orderby = "title"]
Display recent pages under a specific parent page:
[display-posts posts_per_page = "3" post_type = "page" post_parent = "5"]
You can also include an additional style. For example, you can align your highlighted images to the left. You can do this using the instructions available on the plugin website.

For a complete list of parameters visit the documentation plugin.

You can also use these shortcodes inside a text widget. First of all, you will need to enable shortcodes in your text widgets by adding this code to the functions.php file of your theme.

add_filter ('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

Method 5. View manually recent articles on WordPress

More advanced WordPress users may want to view recent articles directly in their WordPress theme files. Course you should use a child theme so that when you update your theme, you won't lose your changes.

It's always a good idea to create a backup before modifying the theme files. 

The best way to view recent articles manually is to use the built-in class WP_Query. Just add this code where you want to display recent articles.



// Define our WP Query Parameters



// Start our WP Query

have_posts ()): $ the_query -> the_post (); ?>

// Display the Post Title with Hyperlink

">

// Display the Post Except



// Repeat the process and reset once it hits the limit

<?php 

endwhile;

wp_reset_postdata ();

?>

This code displays the five most recent articles with their titles and extracts. The WP_Query class has tons of parameters that allow you to customize it the way you want. For more information, please see WordPress developer documentation.

Discover also some premium WordPress plugins  

You can use other WordPress plugins to give a modern appearance and to optimize the connection to your blog or website.

We offer you here some premium WordPress plugins that will help you do that.

1. Gravity Forms

As a business owner, allowing your customers to contact you should be your priority. Gravity Forms is the plugin of Contact form the most popular on WordPress.

gravityformsYou can use it for create any type of form, such as a quote form, surveys, and more.

Download | Demo Web hosting

2. eForm

eForm is an advanced and flexible form builder that can be integrated into an existing WordPress website. It is a complete form management solution. This concerns, among other things, quizzes, surveys, data collection, payment estimation and user comments.eForm WordPress Form Builder wordpress plugin

With such a form designer, you can design forms in an unlimited way and manage them from your dashboard. All requests are stored in your database, you will be able to see, track, analyze and act on the data you have saved.

Read also our article on How content marketing affects the SEO of your blog

In addition, a user portal allows registered users to also review and track their requests.

Download | Demo | Web hosting

3. Mailster

Mailster is a WordPress Plugin easy-to-use premium that will help you integrate a newsletter into your website. With the latter, you will be able to create, send, and track your campaigns without too much hassle.Mailster Email Newsletter Plugin for WordPress

Its main features are: the ability to track open emails, clicks, subscriptions and bounce rates, the ability to target your campaigns, campaign management and planning, support for 6 types of auto-responders, unlimited creation registration forms, a user-friendly interface, customization of the background, support for multilingual, and more.

Download | Demo | Web hosting

Recommended Resources

Find out about other recommended resources to help you build and manage your website.

Conclusion

Here is ! That's it for this tutorial. We hope it helps you view recent posts on WordPress.  If you have any concerns or suggestions in this area, let's find ourselves in the comments section to discuss.

However, you will also be able to consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation or the one on Divi: the best WordPress theme of all time.

But meanwhile, share this article on your different social networks.

...