Adapting the Featured Post Widget Plugin

[Patrick Markut]

Hello Bill,

so far I’m very pleased with your Progress Theme.

But there is one thing I’m missing for my future website: a “Featured Post”-Widget.
I couldn’t find one so I installed the Featured Post Widget Plugin.

My aim is to make it always look exactly like in the Featured PAGE Widget but with a date added above. The structure and alignment is all over the place right now.

Here is a comparison picture: http://patrickmarkut.de/pic.jpg

I’m not very familiar with coding. So is it somehow possible to adapt it permanently?

Maybe it’s also possible to have the same editing options like in the page widget because the amount of options in the page widget is to high. That would be awesome.

I hope you are able to help me with that.

Best regards from germany,
Patrick Markut

[Patrick Markut]

Correction: I meant the amount of options in the POST widget is to high

[Bill Robbins]

Patrick,

If you’re ok with this, it would actually be a bit easier for me to just make a plugin that has a featured post widget that looks like the featured page one for you.

If that’s ok with you, I’ll set it up tomorrow and post it here for you.

Thanks,
Bill

[Patrick Markut]

Bill,

sure, that would be awesome!
All I need is a featured post widget where I can choose the posts I want.

I just didn’t know the best way for you to this.

Thank you in advance,
Patrick

[Bill Robbins]

Patrick,

I made the plugin for you. You can download it at https://support.organizedthemes.com/samples/progress/widget-featured-post.php.zip

It will look just like the Featured Page widget, but will instead of choosing a page, you pick a category to display the latest post from.

If you have any questions or trouble, just let me know.

Thanks,
Bill

[Patrick Markut]

Bill,

thank you, thats already way better.
There are 3 things I would like to be changed though.

1. Unfortunately it doesn’t exaclty look like the page widget.
Here is a picture: http://www.patrickmarkut.de/pic2.jpg
– Thumbnail is to big
– Empty space between thumbnail and title
But I like the Title just how it is (orange and linked).

2. I would like to see the post date above the thumbnail.

3. What I really need is the possibility to choose any post I want and not only the latest post if possible.

I hope it’s not to much work for you.
I really appreciate your great support!

Patrick

[Bill Robbins]

Patrick,

I uploaded a new version for you. You can use the link above to access it. Here are some notes for you:

1. I did change the post widget to use a thumbnail size that’s part of the theme (there’s a bug of sorts in the featured page widget as it’s set to use a size that’s not there). I took it back out of the featured posts widget so it should be the same now.

To even out the spacing, go to the Custom CSS box in the Styling tab of the theme options page and paste this:

.widget p.post-meta {
	margin-bottom: 10px;
}

.featured-posts img,
.featuredpage img {
	max-width: 100%;
	height: auto;
	margin-bottom: 10px;
}

2. I added in a date for you. If you need to adjust the styling, the .widget p.post-meta above can be tweaked to change things like the font size or the spacing if you’d like to.

3. The best way to handle that is to have a category that you only use for posts that you want to appear on your home page. You can have as many categories as you like to and you can assign multiple categories to one post if you need to also.

Just create a category that will be tied to the posts on your home page. If you want a post to not be displayed there, leave it out of the category. You could even create a category and only publish one post in it ever if you needed to.

I hope that helps out,
Bill

[Patrick Markut]

Bill,

now it looks perfect, thank you very much!

Even though I would have liked the possibility to choose the posts directly, I hope I can live with creating and choosing categories instead.

Still two little questions not only about the widget:

1. How do I change the the font STYLE of…
a: …the post widget title?
b: …the titles of pages and posts?

2. How do I change the font SIZE of the post widget title?

Thanks,
Patrick

[Bill Robbins]

Patrick,

You can change those. Place these snippets in your Custom CSS box:

Widget Titles:

h4.widget-title, 
h2.widget-title {
	font-size: 2em;
	font-weight: 400;
	font-style: italic;
}

The size is set in a unit called em’s which are a percentage based unit. You can switch to pixels if that would be helpful. I added in a font weight and style too so you can change those.

Page Titles:

h1.title {
	font-weight: 400;
	font-style: italic;
}

You can change the weight and style with that above.

If you have any questions or trouble, let me know,
Bill

[Charles Wilson]

Is there any way to rotate posts in a category in the “Featured Post” box?

[Bill Robbins]

If you’d like to try that, I’d go with some type of slideshow widget plugin. I’m afraid I don’t have one to recommend, but that’s probably the easiest option.

[Charles Wilson]

Ok, thanks. I just want to randomly select a post whenever someone goes to the site. I’ll poke around.

[Bill Robbins]

If you can find one that’s javascript powered, then you can randomize it pretty well. That’s how I do the customer quotes at the bottom of our store. It’ll even work with a caching plugin that way. If it’s set to be random in php, then it won’t work quite right with a caching plugin.

[Author]

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