WordPress Plugin/Widget for Must Read Posts

Today, I was looking for a simple WordPress widget that allows me to statically display links to certain posts in the sidebar. I could have used the links widget but it wasn’t flexible enough for me. My idea was to use a certain custom field of a post or page as a trigger to display it in a widget. I searched for almost an hour but I just couldn’t find any simple, widget-capable WordPress plugins that could do this?! 

In the end, I ended up writing my own widget-capable plugin. I decided to publish it so anyone else can use it on her/his blog too. The plugin’s name is “Must Read Posts”. It shows your most recommended posts and pages in a sidebar widget or in a page. As the widget’s title is editable in the WordPress Dashboard you could change it to something like “Recommended Posts”, “Important information”, “Tips & Tricks” or whatever you like.

The plugin works using a certain custom field name called must-read. If the field exists in a page or post and has the value true, the post automatically will be shown in the widget. The next image shows the plugin in action. The Must Read Posts widget is visible in the right sidebar on this theme.

Once installed, you can use it with the

<?php get_mustread('Custom Title', number of posts); ?>

 
instruction in your templates or just add it as a widget to your sidebar. If you use the widget you can also specify the maximum number of posts to be shown in the widget.

If you use the plugin for the first time, click “Add new custom field” to add a field name must-read and insert true in the value field of the page or post you want to be shown in the new widget. Once you want to display an additional post in the widget, just select it from the custom field drop-down box and insert true in the value field.

Installation

1. Upload must-read-posts.php to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Activate “Must Read Posts” through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. What to do now depends on how up to date your theme is:

Modern theme with widget support

The plugin is also a widget. If your theme supports widgets, and you have installed the widget plugin, adding the plugin to the sidebar is easy: Go to the appearance menu and drag and drop the widget into the sidebar. Don’t forget to save your new widget structure using the save button below.

Old school theme without widget support

This will require some programming in the sidebar.php file. There are many resources on the web about how to do this.

Further Customization

The look of the list of posts and pages in the widget can be customized using the style.css cascading style sheet. Just add your own or the following style to your current theme’s style.css file:

#mustread-posts li {
   list-style-type:square;
   margin-bottom:0.4em;
}

 
The plugin is available from the WordPress plugin web site: Must Read Posts Widget.

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