Using the ‘Recent Posts Plus’ Widget
You’ll notice over on the right hand side of the HeatMap Theme live demo site and CreativityPro.com a widget with the heading ‘Further Reading’. This is actually the HeatMapTheme ‘Recent Posts PLUS’ widget in action. It serves a number of functions, some obvious, some not so.
Firstly, its sort of like a the regular recent posts widget, except that its designed specifically so that thumbnails could be associated with each recent post.
Secondly, the idea is that these images, when done right, will attract the readers eye across the page, to the right sidebar, and thereby increase the chances of a reader viewing ads in that area.
It also has a little bit of logic built in so that Recent Posts PLUS does not display any posts which are currently showing in the main content area of the page. You can see this happen when you are reading a post; the reference to that post disappears from the Recent Posts Plus list.
Where to put the Recent Posts Plus Widget
This Widget works best in the wide widget areas such as [WideBar] Top and [WideBar] Bottom.
Setting up your posts for use with Recent Posts PLUS widget
Recent Posts Plus uses custom fields to create the listings. The custom fields are as follows:
thumbnail – The URL of the thumbnail image associated with the post. 75 x 75 pixels is a good size for the image.
short-excerpt – The short text excerpt associated with this post. Keep it concise!
short-more-text – If you’d like a ‘read more’ type link then you can specify what that ‘read more’ text should be with this custom field.
You’ll need to use these custom fields in every post. It’s a little extra work, but the end result can be quite effective.
