WordPress.com Popular Posts

WordPress.com Popular Posts integrates with WordPress.com Stats plugin, providing a widget to show the most viewed posts.

Installation

  • From v2.0.0, WordPress 2.8 is required. If you are using an older version of WordPress, use v1.3.5 of this plugin.
  • Install WordPress.com Stats plugin (required at least v1.2!!!)
  • Download WordPress.com Popular Posts
  • Extract the files in the .zip archive, and upload them (including subfolders) to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  • Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  • Place the widget where you like in your sidebars
  • Enjoy!

Themes Integration

If your theme supports widgets, you can place the widget named ‘Popular Posts’ where you want.

If it doesn’t, put this code inside the file sidebar.php, in your theme files:

<?php if (function_exists('WPPP_show_popular_posts')) WPPP_show_popular_posts(); ?>

Optionally you can add some parameters to the function, in this format:

name=value&name=value etc.

Possible names are:

  • title (title of the widget, you can add tags (e.g. <h3>Popular Posts</h3>) default: Popular Posts)
  • number (number of links shown, default: 5)
  • days (length of the time frame of the stats, default 0, i.e. infinite)
  • show (what you want to show; it can be: both, posts, pages; default is both)
  • format (the format of the links shown, default:
    <a href='%post_permalink%' title='%post_title%'>%post_title%</a>

    )

  • excerpt_length (the length of the excerpt, if %post_excerpt% is used in the format)
  • title_length (the length of the title links, default 0, i.e. unlimited)
  • exclude (the list of post/page IDs to exclude, separated by commas. Read the FAQ for instructions)
  • cutoff (don’t show posts/pages with a view count under this number, default 0, i.e. unlimited)
  • list_tag (can be: ul, ol, none, default ul)
  • category (the ID of the category, see the FAQ for info. Default 0, i.e. all categories)
  • cachename (it is used to enable the cache. Please read the FAQ).

You can use these special markers in the format value:

  • %post_permalink% the link to the post
  • %post_title% the title the post
  • %post_title_attribute% the title of the post; use this in attributes, e.g.
    <a title='%post_title_attribute%'...
  • %post_views% number of views
  • %post_excerpt% the first n characters of the content. Set n in the widget options.
  • %post_category% the category of the post
Example

If you want to show the widget without any title, the 3 most viewed articles, in the last week, and in this format: My Article (123 views) you will use this:

<?php WPPP_show_popular_posts( "title=&number=3&days=7&format=<a href='%post_permalink%' title='%post_title_attribute%'>%post_title% (%post_views% views)</a>" );?>
Shortcodes

If you want to include the list in a particular page or post, you can use shortcodes. Please read the FAQ for further info.

FAQ

Please read other updated FAQ here.

Changelog

You can read the whole changelog on the project page.

Download

Download
Download latest version of WordPress.com Popular Posts
for WordPress 2.8+

or v1.3.5 for WordPress < 2.8

License

WordPress.com Popular Posts is released under a GPL v3 license.

This plugin required many hours of development. If you like this plugin, then buy me a coffee!

  • #1 scritto da Blutarsky
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Frasten I’m not using widgets and I saw how to enable the cache. What I would like to know is what version is served to visitors: cache only, regardless of the time interval?

  • #2 scritto da KJ
    circa 11 mesi fa

    I don’t get anything showing, apart from ‘Popular Posts’. Does it take a little bit of time to start showing popular posts? Or have I done something wrong?

    Thanks.

  • #3 scritto da Chilli-Alex
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Great plugin, thanks.

  • #4 scritto da Blutarsky
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Ciao there Frasten,

    I’m currently using your latest plugin with wp 2.8.4.

    I have setup the plugin with no widgets, to use the cache, and it works properly.

    The only problem I see is that, once the timeout is reached, the plugin queries again the stats database, cache or not.

    In my opinion, the cached version for non-logged users, should be kept the same, until a logged-in user will trigger the timeout forcing a cache update.

    What do you think?

  • #5 scritto da mdstudio
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Hi,
    I’ve been using your plug-in for a couple weeks and really like it. I am having a couple challenges with it and am hoping that you can give me some suggestions on how to fix them.

    1. I use html tags in parts of my post headlines. The plug-in doesn’t recognize them so the tags are visible in the popular pages list. Any thoughts on how to make them disappear or, even better, be utilized?

    2. When I installed the plug-in, I saw the proper list of eight popular posts. About a week ago, all of the items in the list disappeared. Over the next couple days, 1-3 popular posts started to populate the list again. The few that are showing up in the list are the most popular (couple hundred visits daily) but obviously others should be showing up as well. I just increased the number of titles that should show up but there’s no change. Any thoughts?

    Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer. I really appreciate your time and hard work.

  • #6 scritto da Cody
    circa 11 mesi fa

    First of all, great plugin. I love it and it does (almost!) everything I need it to do.

    I am having one issue. When I am using it to list the most popular posts in a category, it will only work if the category ID is less than 10 (i.e. ID=less). I have one category on my site with an ID of 59 which the plugin refuses to work for.

    I have confirmed that the plugin is receiving the correct ID number by echoing the variable above the output.

    Any thoughts?

  • #7 scritto da godaddy coupon codes
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Awesome plugin. How can I make the display horizontal instead of vertical?

  • #8 scritto da godaddy coupons
    circa 11 mesi fa

    I sent you the debut log, thanks for the support!

  • #9 scritto da frasten
    circa 11 mesi fa

    @Coco: about your issue with OL in IE7/8: I’ve just tested it with IE7, and it shows the list correctly: 1,2,3,4,5… I think there could be something wrong with your CSS

    @Blutarsky: I see what you mean. But it doesn’t make sense for me: the cache was introduced only to speed up the plugin, not to lock the list.

    @KJ: can you please mail me a debug log (instructions in the FAQ)?

    @mdstudio: 1) I’ll look into that.
    2) please mail me a debug log, as stated above.

    @Cody: I think it could be related to the subcategories issue. Is your category 59 a subcategory of something else?
    However, it was already fixed in the development version, just wait for a new release :-)

    @godaddy coupon codes: It’s a CSS thing. Take a look here.

  • #10 scritto da mdstudio
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Frasten,
    I think I solved the issue of popular post links not showing up. I believe it was a communication problem with WordPress stats. I re-entered the API and account info and it seems to be working fine now. :o) BTW, is there any easy way to eliminate “Home” from the list?

    Thanks in advance for looking into finding a way to make html tags work in the link titles!!!

  • #11 scritto da frasten
    circa 11 mesi fa

    @mdstudio: I’m glad you fixed it.
    To eliminate “Home”, you can choose to show only posts, or exclude its ID (read the FAQ to discover that ID).

  • #12 scritto da Blutarsky
    circa 11 mesi fa

    Well, popular posts stats don’t change so often to justify continuous querying to the Internet service.

    There could be an option for example to force the plugin to serve always the cached version, regardless the timeouts, and at the same time allow the plugin running from command line allowing cache update from batch jobs using the cron/curl pair.

  • #13 scritto da ToNo
    circa 11 mesi fa

    I don’t know but I like this plugin couse it help me to know my popular articles :o) :o) (F)

  • #14 scritto da Andreas
    circa 10 mesi fa

    My theme supports widgets, and as a widget Popular Posts works perfectly. (Y)

    However, I would like to exclude a certain post from the results. Is this possible to do while using widgets? Putting “” in my sidebar.php only seems to allow me to put Popular Posts at the top or absolute bottom of my other widgets, which is not where I would like it to be… :-/

  • #15 scritto da Andreas
    circa 10 mesi fa

    Please excuse me – I discovered what was wrong. Everything works now! :-D