How and Why to display Recent Posts in your WordPress
Did you know aside from having your users view the top 5 posts on the first page, you can also show as many recent posts you want on your homepage. Well in this post I will talk about how you can display recent posts in your wordpress and why should you do it.
Recent Posts
Basically what this will do is display a list of recent posts in your blog. You can insert this anywhere on the template, but most people do it on the sidebar. You do not need a widget or plugin to do this. All you need is the code below.
<?php get_archives(‘postbypost’, ’40′, ‘custom’, ‘<li>’, ‘</li>’); ?>
As you see the number 40 means it will show 40 recent posts on the main page. This is what is currently being displayed on Balkhis. (I know it is alot, but it will change with the new template.. Inside Leak)
Anyways as you can see all the above function can do is display the link to recent posts, and many people have modified codes in different ways to help themselves.
For those who like everything to be done via admin panel, I looked in the plugin directory of wordpress to find this one. This plugin will let you display excerpt and bunch of other features. Everything done via admin panel. Download this plugin.
Now that you know how to display recent posts in wordpress, I will tell you why you should display it.
Main advantage of displaying Recent posts in your WordPress is SEO. Yes, in my opinion that it helps a site in indexing and in ranking when you display a link to recent posts on wordpress. Some sites does not get indexed quickly, and if pages are indexed, they are often ignored due to lack of importance. What do I mean by lack or importance? I am displaying 5 posts on one page, and if I post 2 – 3 posts a day within 2 days that one post will be on the second page. To show a search engine bot that this page is important index it and rank it, you need to put the links on homepage. Now I am not saying display all 40, you can display 10, 15 or so. Now let me explain to you why I think this way. Aside from your homepage, what else gets high PR, or get mentioned when given sitelinks in google. The About page, Contact page, and some other pages that are linked through the homepage. I figure if one put about 10 – 15 recent post links on the homepage, search engine will visit them daily for a certain period of time which ensure that those posts get indexed and ranked.
The next advantage is, it helps users like me. While search is a good option, I usually look at the recent posts to keep track of the blogs that I read. Whether I have read that post or not, so it is just another cool thing to add on your blog for your users.
Do you have recent posts on your blog?
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
I’m not sure what I did wrong but copying the piece of code in my right bar template generated an error.
I didn’t want to think to much, I decided to download the plug in.
It’s true i always find easy to know which story I missed since my last visit on a blog by looking at the recent post bar.
Good idea.
hmm wondering what went wrong.. .Lets wait and see if anyone else have the problem with this …
Thanks Syed – I have a few recent posts in the sidebar – now if only I could get up the nerve to upgrade to the latest version.
I just can’t emphasize how important it is to upgrade to the recent updates specially when wordpress releases the bug report because all the hackers can get into your site through those…
I dont think there is any importance of using recent posts in sidebar. you already have all those links on homepage..
Popoular posts plugin is more important.
it can be debated either way. Yes I agree that popular post plugin is important as well.
sorry dont feel bad, just my suggestion. Though I dont have much SEO knowledge
For starters, placing your recent posts is a good idea.Because, your website is just new, people are not used in navigating in your site. Plus, a pageview is very important for new blogs.
Although I must agree that popular post plugin is important too.
So maybe we need a post on how to replace the recent posts with the top posts in the sidebar….
sure thing … will post that one soon
Sure sounds logical to me. I had been showing last 5 posts in my sidebar. I’ve just modified it to show the top 40!
Here is the code that I’ve been using on my site:
<a href="" title="">
Looks a bit crude but work well
Wow – 40 – I thought I really upped the number when I went from 5 to 10. lol
I have 40 on Balkhis right now also lol
I think even Shoemoney shows a lot of his recent posts.
Holy Crap! The code didn’t look like this when I had posted it!!
Since this post I’ve definitely seen a reduction in my bounce rate. Now WP-stats show me plenty of old posts with 1 or 2 pageviews.
[...] Days ago I wrote a post about How to display recent posts in your wordpress sidebar and gave reasons on why one should include that. A few of the users brought up the point that [...]
Would you say that my website is set up right for this? My sidebar has “latest” “random” “catergories” and “archives” as you will be able to see.
I want to learn as much SEO as possible before I decide to take my website to the next level.
Sorry to ask this, but is the URI box above to put your website in? I tried to Google it, but could not find anything relevant.
I think you should check out other seo posts on my site to learn some of the seo techniques that I have shared on this blog. Also I don’t know which URI bar you are talking about, but if you are talking about the search bar then no it is not for url, but it is for searching keywords within your site.
I will check your other posts out, I have subscribed for updates
I was talking about the URI field which is displayed on your comment box, I am pretty sure it is for urls now though.
I feel like I am going about my SEO in the wrong way, but this website is helping me learn. I already followed your advice on the “all in one SEO plugin” and I think I have my url structure sorted out.