Potentially one of two things. The first would be misunderstanding! If you wrote the posts in question using the same login name as the one you usually log in with (i.e., same account) then you wont see these posts in the listings as you already know about them.

Recent Post listings are personalised and will quite likely be different for each user who views the site. Your own posts will not be shown – what’s the point?  Posts in topics a user does not have access to will not be shown. Posts that may be awaiting moderation will not be shown to a non-admin/moderator. Etc.

So listings do need to be viewed taking the above into account.

if that is not the issue then the second reason is probably the use of a WordPress caching plugin. And if you are using one of them then any page with forum data – because that data is dynamic and can not be cached the same way blog posts can be – needs to be excluded from the cache.

Thank you for your reply.

I do not understand your explanation for the first scenario entirely but in the past, I was able to see my own posts in the list of recent topics on the homepage immediately after posting. Furthermore, the posts shown are by different members so I should be able to view their recent posts, going by your explanation. Again, this is not the case as I have confirmed with several members that we are not seeing these recent posts.

The second explanation sounds more plausible but I have checked on a plugin I have installed that has a caching feature, and I found that this caching function was not turned on at all. 

I am still at a loss as to why recent posts are not showing up.

Is there any other reason or fix I can try?

You are quite right that your own posts do appear. I was confusing the recent post widget with general new post lists. I must say that across our whole user base we have no other reports of issues so I do tend to think this is a local thing at the moment.

So tell me about the cache plugin. What is it please? I ask because some of the cacheing plugins are not necessarily turned completely off when deactivated.

I am using Wordfence, a security plugin, which includes a caching feature.

Earlier, I had turned caching off but since today, I have turned it on.

However, I have set the forum section to be excluded from caching, as shown in the screenshot of the settings below.

I have decided to deactivate the Wordfence plugin so as to troubleshoot if it was indeed this plugin or its caching feature that might be affecting the widget’s abitlity to refresh.

After deactivating the plugin, I refreshed the website a few times but the posts are still not appearing.

I have no personal experience of WordFence so know nothing of its caching methods or scope. But as I said above – with some caching plugins deactivating is not enough. They create code and data tables that also need to be removed and iof they are not the cached items can hang around for a while still being used. Can you check that this is not the case with Wordfence?

I get your point.

How do I check that this is not the case with Wordfence?

There was a button to clear the cache from within Wordfence, and after that one can check the status of the cache. I did flush the cache earlier and when I checked the status of the cache, it showed that the cache was empty.

Would this be enough to remove the codes and tables that might have been generated?

I would appreciate any specific instructions as to how to remove this, if you are able. Thank you.

Unfortunately I don’t think any of us would know what could be left behind that could cause problems, the best bet would be to contact the developers of Wordfence directly and ask them what might have been created that would be left behind after deactivating or uninstalling completely.

Just checked your site and thought I’d point out that I also see a jquery conflict of some kind that should be dealt with just to eliminate it from being a potential cause. Is everything up to date including WP, WP themes and plugins?

WP and WP Theme are up to date, while some plugins are not.

How am I able to check for jquery conflict? Sorry, I am not very technically inclined and these web terms are not very familiar to me.

I am not even sure if Wordfence could be a culprit. It was brought into this discussion due to the fact that it has a caching function to help speed up the site. Now that it has been deactivated, what is the probability that something left behind could cause problems with your widget?

so you are running wp multisite???  certainly appears so…  I assume that all the posts you want are from the forum on the main site and not from one of the network sites? 

Mr Papa, yes, I am running a WP multisite and the one and only forum is on the main root site, and not from one of the network sites.

Do you have any suggestions to help me resolve this issue?

I am happy to PM you an admin level login if that will help troubleshoot the issue.

Not totally sure where @mr-papa was going with that so I will leave him to chime in if relevant. Personally I I am having some difficulty working out what could cause your problem., As I say – this is an old widget and tag that has been around for some time without any issues currently on the books except yours.

The only thing that seems to be different here is the repeated use of the widget. I doubt this is an issue but I am wondering if there might be an internal cache conflict of some sort. Would it be possible for you to temporarily remove the duplicate widgets so that just the one is left to see if it behaves on its own? So that at least we can potentially remove that from the equation…

was just making sure since you were running multisite that you werent trying to aggregate forum posts from different forums on network sites into a single list…  but  you say no, so no further thoughts there…

As suggested, I have removed other instances of the widget on the homepage so there is only one that is active now.

However, this doesn’t seem to have had any effect and posts are still not being updated.

If, as it appears, that the problem may not lie with the widget or plugin itself, so I will disable all other site plugins and see if it starts to function properly again.

In the meantime, if anyone has further ideas or suggestions, I would gratefully like to hear them.