If you want to display five last posts from your Wordpress blog, use this function:

<ul>
  <?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=5'); ?>
</ul>

For more detailed info go here

Recently my client’s design required displaying posts in sidebar only from one category. To solve this problem I decided to use class WP_Query.

The first we have to create instance of WP_Query:

Then call method query(); to start the query. This is actually same as you would be using query_posts();
Parameter cat indicates which category’s posts are shown. Parameter showposts is the number of posts to be displayed.

query('cat=1&showposts=5'); ?>

Now we can use loop:

<?php while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post(); ?>
<!-- Here goes some code -->
<?php endwhile; ?>

Final code that displays last 5 posts’ permalinks from category with ID=1 looks like this:

<h2>Last posts</h2>
<?php $recent = new WP_Query(); ?>
<?php $recent->query('cat=1&showposts=5'); ?>
<?php while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post(); ?>
<ul>
	<li>
            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
            <?php the_title(); ?>
            </a>
       </li>
</ul>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Using your own WP_Query instance and loop prevents you from problems that might cause plugins’ loops and use of conditional tags.

Multilevel-navigation plugin for Wordpress is beyond all doubts a great plugin that allows you to create beautiful dropdown menus and enrich the look of your wordpress theme.
The only problem while working with Multi level navigation plug-in is that it doesn’t keep current item ‘Homepage’ highlighted. If you have encountered the same problem and would like to keep the ‘home page’ link highlighted, here is my quick and easy solution:

This is how you can set color for ‘current’ item:

You have to use class li.current_page_parent:

#suckerfishnav li.current_page_parent,
#suckerfishnav li.current_page_parent,
#suckerfishnav li.current_page_item {color:yellow;}
#suckerfishnav li.current_page_parent a:hover,
#suckerfishnav li.current_page_parent a,
#suckerfishnav li.current_page_item a {color:yellow;}

And now how to keep homepage item of menu highlighted:

1.  In plugin’s settings disable viewing ‘Home’ item. From now on you are not going to need it.

2.  Create new page and name it ‘Home’ …or how you want to.

3.  If you want this page to be viewed as first you have to set order value of the page lower than other pages. Now the item ‘Home’ should be on the first place in your menu.

4.  Go to Settings–>Reading and set your posts page to be viewed by clicking on the ‘Home’ link. Now every time you click ‘Home’ item in your menu, you will get to your homepage.

5.  The last problem is the URL in the browser. It is viewed like this:

Probably you will want the URL after clicking on ‘Home’ item to be www.yourdomain.com without the ‘/home/’. This issue we can easily solve with Page links to plugin. You can get it here or install it directly via ‘add new plugin’ panel.

6.  The plugin adds option ‘page links to’ to the page’s options. Just type in your domain’s URL and that’s it. Multilevel navigation plugin’s Home item issue is solved.