Customizable Recent Posts Widget

Now that we understand the JSON-feed mechanism, it is quite easy to convert all our feeds to customizable widgets, that you can copy to your own sidebar. You can use the widget to display your own recent posts on your own blog, but you can in fact display the post-feeds of any Blogger blog you like.

Installation is easy.

Install Widget

Go to the Widgets & Downloads Page and click the Install Recent Posts button.

This will bring up a pop-up window in which you can customize the widget settings, before adding it to your blog.

Replace 'beautifulbeta' with the name of your own blog.

Set the number of recent posts you want to show (default = 5).

If you want the post date to be displayed, check the box (default = checked).

If you want a post summary to be displayed, check the other box (default = checked), and enter the number of characters of the postsummary that you want to display (default = 100).

If you want the standard styling, select the 'standard' radio-button. If you want to define your own CSS-definitions, select 'custom css'. After installing the widget you will have to add CSS-definitions to your blog's template for the classes .bbrecpost, .bbrecpostsum and .bbwidgetfooter.

Now click the 'Customize' button, or click 'Reset' to return to the default values. If you are satisfied with the settings, click 'Add Widget To My Blog'. This will bring up the Blogger-screen that lets you select your Blog to install the widget to. Click the blue 'Add' button to add the widget to your blog.

Update 1: the widget did not work for Short feeds. That is fixed now, it will work for both Full and Short feeds.

Update 2: it is not longer needed to add the javascript library to your template. The widget now realy is plug and play.

Update 3: you can install the widget using Beautiful Beta's Widget Installer. Click-n-Go, no hacking or editing needed!

If your Blog is published to your own FTP-site, click here for the FTP-version of this widget.