One of my all-time favourite plugins to use is Nick the Geeks’ Genesis Featured Widget Amplified plugin. I must have used it on every site I designed for the past month. Nick is a genius! This is one awesome plugin that’s extremely useful and works like a charm.
What does it do?
It adds functionality to the Genesis Featured Posts Widget. You know that widget on the homepage where you can feature latest posts or post categories magazine-style? That’s the one. This plugin allows you to choose not just what categories to feature, but how to show the featured posts. You can even control the way the post titles are shown vis a vis your featured image (Before? After? Aligned to the left? Right? Centered?); arrange posts by comment count or date posted; set a limit to post title length, etc. Specifically, the plugin –
- Supports Custom Post Types
- Supports Custom Taxonomies
- Exclude Term by ID field
- Supports Pagination
- Supports Meta Key Values
- Supports Sorting by Meta Key
- Multiple Hooks and Filters for adding additional content
How do you install it?
- On your dashboard, go to plugins.
- Add New.
- Search for the Genesis Featured Widget Amplified.
- Click install and activate.
- Go to widgets, find it among the list of active widgets, and drag it into a widget area.
- Set it up the way you want it.
How do you set it up?
Once you have it in a widget area, you will see this
As you can see, there are a myriad of options available to you. Setup the image and content options however you want. Now you have 100% control over which posts show up in your “Featured Posts” without an extra tag, category, or other taxonomy and you can sort the order of the posts in this widget without changing the date, so your archives display in the order you wrote my posts, but this widget displays in the order you want. If you want it to show your top posts, you can choose Order By Comment Count, and it will show the posts with the highest number of comments.
Additional controls show up once you click on some of the options. For example, in one of the themes I recently installed, the client wanted to show a grid of post thumbnails and titles but no content. Here is a screenshot of the settings:
Note that the size of the featured image options available to you will depend on the theme currently installed. Don’t forget to save your settings!
I hope you found that helpful! Let me know in the comments if there are any other tips and tricks you want me to feature. I’d love to help you learn how to manage your own Genesis-powered sites.
Hi! Thanks for your expertise in this! Was using this on my site I am creating but when I add a category such as appetizers, it doesn’t show up on the drop down list on the widget. I am wanting to categorize my recipes and wondered if you had encountered this problem and how I might be able to fix it? Thanks in advance
Hi Michelle! That’s strange. It has always worked for me. Are there any posts under the category?
I going to ask a really silly question but b’cause I have zero skills, I will. Is Genesis Featured Widget Amplified n G extender plug in the same thing? I’m trying to re create a home page layout like your. (3 boxes at the top then blog features at the bottom ) thank you 🙂
Hi! They’re totally different. And I didn’t use any of them on my homepage. 🙂
Hi!
I found your site while trying to figure out how to make my Genesis Featured Post widget display posts side-by-side (like 3 across) in a div area instead of stacked on top of each other.
i don’t see an option for layout changes in Genesis Featured Widget Amplified. Do you know how I can achieve this goal?
Thanks!
Lindsay
Hi Lindsay! You’ll have to edit the css code of the widget area.
Hi Patricia, are you concerned that this plugin hasn’t been updated in a long time? I want to use a plugin that allows posts on the home page to be shown only if they have a specific tag (or if possible a tag combination) and this seems like it will work but I am concerned about it being a little old in terms of updates…
Be grateful for your thoughts 🙂
Chris
Yes, I am actually. I’ve stopped using it since last year.
Hmm. Have you found another that is supported and could work in it’s place – or perhaps another way round doing what you needed to do with it?
I’ve been using the standard Genesis Featured Post widget and customizing the result via php. 🙂
Great – thanks 🙂