I don't think there is a way to sort them by date, or list the date they were created. You can approximate it using ID number though. Each new category has an ID number greater than the last one. This should list the last five categories in descending ID order, and show the date of the last updated post. <?php wp_list_categories('orderby=ID&order=DESC&number=5&show_last_update=1'); ?>
Recent categories? Or recent posts? Maybe even recent comments, but what's the use of a category if every single category is exactly a new one with one post only? Lol. Anyway it can be easily done by calling the categories function with relations to published/creation date. Check out the wp forums for the hack
It seems there is a bug with show_last_update because there are several complaints about it on the Wordpress forum. So until they fix it, dates won't show up. <?php wp_list_categories('orderby=id&order=desc&number=5&title_li='); ?> I added title_li= to stop it showing the default title 'Categories' above the list. You could change it to title_li=Recent Categories if you like. Also, all the category ID numberd have to be in sequential order, not skipping numbers as sometimes happens with Wordpress. There also doesn't seem to be any way to change the IDs without doing it through MySQL admin. Still looking for a plugin that can handle all that mess
Well I'm using this plugin http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/recent-categories-plugin-for-wordpress/ and it doesn't have the option to add dates next to the list. See this site http://www.kumby.com/ under the heading "Recent Anime Additions" all their latest category are listed there with dates. I wonder how they did it
Maybe they are editing it with the Wordpress template editor. As long as you can code, it would be no trouble.
Ruriko, it's done manually, if you want to have that feature you should find a programmer to create a plugin for you.