If you want to know how to increase the number of ‘recent posts’ that appear in your WordPress sidebar here’s how you can do it.

The default maximum allowed is 15 – well I would like to have 30, so this will involve a little bit of hacking of WordPress’ PHP but it’s not difficult.

You need to locate the file ‘default-widgets.php’ which you will find in your wp-includes folder. For me because I’m using WordPress 2.8.4 the code I need is on line 542 and 543. The code was as follows:

		$title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title']) ? __('Recent Posts') : $instance['title']);
		if ( !$number = (int) $instance['number'] )
			$number = 10;
		else if ( $number < 1 ) $number = 1;
                else if ( $number > 15 )
			$number = 15;

And I just changed the code so that the else if logic would be > 30, like so…

		$title = apply_filters('widget_title', empty($instance['title']) ? __('Recent Posts') : $instance['title']);
		if ( !$number = (int) $instance['number'] )
			$number = 10;
		else if ( $number < 1 )
                        $number = 1;
                else if ( $number > 30 )
			$number = 30;

The last thing you have to do is change the max value for the number of recent posts in your WordPress installation.

WordPress Install > Appearance > Widgets > Recent Posts

And just change the value to your new max value ie. 30. Ignore the text that says: (at most 15)

And you’re good to go…

Simon