WordPress Recent Posts Plugin

This PHP code will give your WordPress blog a recent posts list as I have on my sidebar to the right.

It’s not actually a plugin, you need to cut and paste this code into the sidebar.php of your theme.

Recent Posts

<?php
function get_recent_posts ($num_posts = 10)
{
  global $wpdb, $tableposts, $post, $tablepost2cat;

  if (!isset($tablepost2cat)) $tablepost2cat = $wpdb->post2cat;
  if (!isset($tableposts)) $tableposts = $wpdb->posts;

  $orderby = "$tableposts.post_$orderby";

  $now = current_time('mysql');
  $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT * FROM $tableposts ";
  $sql .= "WHERE $tableposts.post_date <= '$now' AND ( $tableposts.post_status = 'publish' ";
  $sql .= "OR $tableposts.post_status = 'sticky' ";
  $sql .= ") ";
  $sql .= "GROUP BY $tableposts.ID ORDER BY $tableposts.post_date DESC";
  $sql .= " LIMIT 0, $num_posts";

  $posts = array();
  $posts = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
  if (empty($posts)) return;

  echo '<ul>';

  foreach ($posts as $post) {

   $title = the_title('','', false);
   echo '<li>';
   echo '<a href="'.get_permalink().'" title="View'.htmlspecialchars(strip_tags($title)).'">'.$title.'</a>';
   echo '</li>';
  }

  echo '</ul>';

 } //end function get_recent_posts()

 get_recent_posts();
?>