Looking for a “Recently Updated” Wordpress Plugin

So after coming back from SES I had some interesting conversations, looked at some interesting things and came up with a few ideas. One of the things I’d like to try but have never seen is a recently updated function/plugin. How would a recently updated plugin differ from a recently published function … well I’m glad you asked …

Recently updated would be used when you are using pages or posts in a more traditional CMS environment instead of a blog one. For example say you have a library or article database of keystone or flagship content. After the site is 3-4 years old the content may be come outdated. Rather than put up a new page/post with a new URL you decide to use the existing one and update or refresh the content. It would be nice if you could have a list of the ten most recently updated articles or even a page of the 50 or 100 most recently updated pages/posts. Sure you could hack the functionality by changing the publish date but that introduces other complexities.

UPDATE
Thanks to Corey Salzano who cooked up some quick code, thanks.


< ?php
$today = current_time('mysql', 1);
if ( $recentposts = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_modified_gmt < '$today' ORDER BY post_modified_gmt DESC LIMIT 18")):
?>
<h2>< ?php _e("Recent Posts"); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php
foreach ($recentposts as $post) {
if ($post->post_title == '') $post->post_title = sprintf(__('Post #%s'), $post->ID);
echo "<li><a href='".get_permalink($post->ID)."'>";
the_title();
echo '</a></li>';
}
?>
</ul>
< ?php endif; ?>


Popularity: 9% [?]

9 Responses to “Looking for a “Recently Updated” Wordpress Plugin”

1. CS Says:
   August 29th, 2008 at 9:52 am

   I am using a theme Grayland 1.0 that has this functionality built into the bottom of the template by default. The developer’s site is dandyland dot org. I wonder if all this PHP will paste nicely?

   get_results(”SELECT ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = ‘publish’ AND post_date_gmt

   post_title == ”)

   $post->post_title = sprintf(__(’Post #%s’), $post->ID);

   echo “ID).”‘>”;

   the_title();

   echo ‘‘;

   }

   ?>

2. CS Says:
   August 29th, 2008 at 9:55 am

   Nope!

3. Nat Arem Says:
   August 29th, 2008 at 11:36 am

   It seems like it would be easy to hack your way to this sort of functionality in a theme. Using the wpdb class would make it easily to access any sort of info that you might need. The “posts_modified_gmt” field in the posts table would be the one you’d want to go after, not the “post_date_gmt” field being used above. I would use the query below:

   SELECT *
   FROM $wpdb->posts
   WHERE `post_status` = “publish” AND `post_type` = “page”
   ORDER BY `post_modified_gmt` DESC

   Then you’d just need to print out like ten rows worth somewhere on your page or whatever.

   On the other hand, doing it in a plugin is a little more complicated, although not overly difficult.

4. Bryan Says:
   August 29th, 2008 at 3:57 pm

   Thanks Michael and Corey for getting this in place. This plugin is a perfect fit for an instructional site I’m making with WordPress.

5. eko agus Says:
   September 1st, 2008 at 4:12 am

   tx’s for the information that’s plug in to help full improve my WP

6. David Wilson Says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

   Michael

   Under the Publish Status section there is the option to change the post to a different date than it was originally created. Would this not do the same thing as the code above?

   David

7. Michael Gray Says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

   @David Wilson: yes but the goal is to not throw the page back into the RSS of new posts

8. Nat Arem Says:
   September 10th, 2008 at 11:54 pm

   Well, the RSS thing is one aspect, but there’s also the manual work aspect of that solution. Not to mention that there’s no point because WP automatically keeps a field for the latest update already.

9. Customize your WordPress Theme | Neowster Says:
   October 10th, 2008 at 11:02 am

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