You don’t need any custom queries or database calls just to get a list of recent posts. In fact, there’s a function built into WordPress that will do just that. It’s called, wp_get_archives(). You might recognize that as a way to display monthly archives, but with a few parameters, you can modify it to display a list of recently published WordPress posts. Here’s the code:
<?php wp_get_archives('title_li=&type=postbypost&limit=10'); ?>
What this will do is strip any WordPress added formatting and output a nice list of the 10 latest posts, each within it’s own <li> tag.
You should do the same for recent comments
I don’t think this can be done for comments.
There is a way actually, not as easy as this though. I’ll make a post soon about doing recent comments.
Told ya BANAGO, there is
I know its not as easy, but it would help people. I remember how to do it now.
@Anto: I am sure there is as I have implemented that at almost all the blogs I have designed, but what I meant was that it is not done on the way the archive is done.
Yea i know that
I didnt say it was lol 
Anywhoo. Nuff said
good ways~!
I hope it can works in my blog
This is perfect! Exactly what I needed to show the most recent posts in a church website’s main page design. Thanks so much for the tip!
How about a version where you exclude certain categories from the recent posts? this function doesn’t allow the exclusion of categories. I am using it inside the loop before the call for the actual post title in a lefthand sidebar and found that the other version of a custom database query fed the last post title into the main post the_title(). If I use the version you supplied then it doesn’t feed the wrong title to the post but I can’t exclude a few custom categories that feed my news and portfolio.
Thanks a bunch, worked beautifully!
eh thanks.
what should I do to add a header to the lists?
thanks again.
Thanks! Just what I needed
It’s just working fine for me. Thanks for this excellent hack
Can you put time and date to this? If so how?
THANK YOU!!!! been wrestling with several recent post plugins but there was always something needing to be configured, edited, etc finally can remove all of the extra garbage needed to make them work
@Corey: Not with this code, you would probably need to make a custom loop for that.
clean and simple. Cheers for the code
How can I do this with categories ?
You mean a list of categories or a list of posts from a certain categories?
For a list of categories you could use wp_list_categories.
For a list of posts from a certain category you would probably need a custom query. How to do that would need a new tutorial post entirely, but this should get you started.
Thanks, this helped me a ton.
I need to exclude posts from a certain category, how could be done?
You’d need to make a custom loop and exclude the category. See the query_posts page for more info.
Hi How do I make the list have the url’s inside Header tags?
Thanks
Awesome bit of code! Only took me two years to find it. xD
LOL…better late than never.
How about displaying recent posts, together with a set number of characters from the actual entry?
How do I do this and also have thumbnails? Very small thumbnails. 35px X 35 px. Google is annoying me sending me round in circles all day long. They’re useless lol.
Well I await your useful reply.
Thanks.
Oh wow this is easy
Thanks for this great article!
BTW, has anyone come across functions to merge both recent post and page update in chronological order?
Okay. All this code does is display a very simple list of recent posts. The markup is similar to this:
<ul><li><a href="http://example.com/recent-post-3">Latest One</a></li>
<li><a href="http://example.com/recent-post-2">2nd Latest Post</a></li>
<li><a href="http://example.com/recent-post-1">3rd Latest Post</a></li>
</ul>
If you want anything else (thumbnails, character counts, whatever) that would require a custom loop and I can’t really go over each specific case in the comments here.
Can you also tell the system to display the excerpt for the post? or just a teaser?
I’ve implemented it on my about page here: http://www.webdesign-bureau-of-mauritius.com/web-design-mauritius
It works like a charm. Thanks for this!
Thanx Leland – just in the nick of time
*Love ur site btw
M.?