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One of the nice things about WordPress is the large community of enthusiasts who both use and develop for it. If you're stuck, the chances are high someone can help you. If you have a particular requirement, chances are that someone has written a plug-in that does just what you want. And if there is no plug-in, someone might just make one if you ask nice...

For a while I'd been wondering about how to list the most recent post from each category on my WordPress home page. I kept my eyes open for a solution but found none, and not been adept at PHP I wasn't up to creating one myself. In my search I came across Aleister's Other Posts from Cat plug-in, which shows the last X posts from the current category at a location of your choice. It seemed to have vaguely similar underpinnings to my requirement, so I sent Aleister a message on 31 May:

Subject: DD Contact:New WP plug-in idea?

I came across your plug-in while Googling for a way to do the following:

On the homepage, list only the most recent post from each blog category.

Sounds simple, but I can't find any plug-in or hack to do this. Feel like a challenge? ;-)

On the same day, Aleister wrote back saying version 1.0 was "All done ;)"

Wow—that's some response! You can download the said plug-in here, which is described thus:

This plugin displays a list of the latest post from each category of your WordPress installation. It can be added to a post or page, or used directly in a template file. In the plugin's options page you can choose the sort order, show or hide the dates, select the date formatting, show the first X characters of the content, as well as other options.

I'm ashamed to say it took me three days to try it out (I was focussing on Gallery). It's supremely easy to use and it works well. I tried it using my K2-based theme with this code in sidebar.php:

<?php if (is_home()) { ?>
<div class="sb-latestcat"><h2><?php _e('Latest in each category'); ?></h2>
<?php echo dd_last_from_each(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

It looked like this (dates disabled; no heading text):

I also inserted it at the top of loop.php, to make it appear at the top of the home page:

<?php /* If this is the frontpage */ if (is_home()) { ?>
<div class="latestcat"><h2><?php _e('Latest in each category'); ?></h2>
<?php echo dd_last_from_each(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

Unstyled, with the same plug-in settings (Dashboard > Options > DDLatestFromEach) it looked like this:

Great work Aleister and many thanks!

Feature request: hyperlinks to category names (as per "Category feeds" in my home page sidebar). He's a mover, this guy Aleister!

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