WordPress Popular Posts Plugin
A highly customizable, easy-to-use popular posts plugin!
WordPress Popular Posts is a highly customizable plugin that displays your most popular posts.
Main Features
- Multiple Popular Posts Lists – You can have several Popular Posts lists on your blog, each with its own settings!
- Time Range – List those posts of your blog that have been the most popular ones within a specific time range (eg. last 24 hours, last 7 days, last 30 days, etc)!
- Custom Post-type support – Want to show other stuff than just posts and pages, eg. Popular Products? You can!
- Thumbnails! – Display a thumbnail of your posts! (see the FAQ section for more details.)
- Statistics dashboard – See how your popular posts are doing directly from your admin area.
- Sorting options – Order your popular list by comments, views (default) or average views per day!
- Custom themes – Out of the box, WordPress Popular Posts includes some themes so you can style your popular posts list (see Widget Themes for more details).
- Use your own layout! – WPP is flexible enough to let you customize the look and feel of your popular posts! (see customizing WPP’s HTML markup and How to style WordPress Popular Posts for more.)
- Advanced caching features! – WordPress Popular Posts includes a few options to make sure your site’s performance stays as good as ever! (see Performance for more details.)
- REST API Support – Embed your popular posts in your (web) app! (see REST API Endpoints for more.)
- Disqus support – Sort your popular posts by Disqus comments count!
- Polylang & WPML 3.2+ support – Show the translated version of your popular posts!
- WordPress Multisite support – Each site on the network can have its own popular posts list!
Other Features
- Shortcode support – Use the [wpp] shortcode to showcase your most popular posts on pages, too! For usage and instructions, please refer to the Installation section.
- Template tags – Don’t feel like using blocks? No problem! You can still embed your most popular entries on your theme using the
wpp_get_mostpopular()template tag. Additionally, thewpp_get_views()template tag allows you to retrieve the views count for a particular post. For usage and instructions, please refer to the Installation section. - Localization – Translate WPP into your own language.
- WP-PostRatings support – Show your visitors how your readers are rating your posts!
PSA: The classic WordPress Popular Posts widget has reached End-of-Life
The classic WordPress Popular Posts widget doesn’t work very well / at all with the new Widgets screen introduced with WordPress 5.8.
This new Widgets screen expects WordPress blocks instead of regular WordPress widgets. If you’re using the classic WordPress Popular Posts widget please replace it with the WordPress Popular Posts block instead – it has the same features and functionality as the “classic” widget so you won’t be missing anything at all. See the Migration Guide for more details.
Bjorn from wplearninglab.com was kind enough to create a video explaining how to use the new block for all of you visual learners:
If you cannot (or do not want to) use WordPress blocks on your website then please replace your classic widget with the [wpp] shortcode.
Support the Project!
If you’d like to support my work and efforts to creating and maintaining more open source projects your donations and messages of support mean a lot!
WordPress Popular Posts is now also on GitHub!
Looking for a Recent Posts widget just as featured-packed as WordPress Popular Posts? Try Recently!
Credits
- Flame graphic by freevector/Vecteezy.com.
Installation
Please make sure your site meets the minimum requirements before proceeding.
Automatic installation
- Log in into your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins > Add New.
- In the “Search Plugins” field, type in WordPress Popular Posts and hit Enter.
- Find the plugin in the search results list and click on the “Install Now” button.
Manual installation
- Download the plugin and extract its contents.
- Upload the
wordpress-popular-postsfolder to the/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the WordPress Popular Posts plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
Done! What’s next?
- Please see the Usage section below to learn how to add a popular post list to your site. Once you’re done, keep reading.
- If you have a caching plugin installed on your site, flush its cache now so WPP can start tracking your site.
- If you have a plugin that minifies JavaScript (JS) installed on your site please read this FAQ: Is WordPress Popular Posts compatible with plugins that minify/bundle JavaScript code?
- If you have a security / firewall plugin installed on your site, make sure you allow WPP access to the REST API so it can start tracking your site.
- Go to Appearance > Editor > Theme File Editor. Under “Theme Files”, click on “Theme Header” (
header.php) and make sure that the<?php wp_head(); ?>tag is present (it should be somewhere before the closing</head>tag). - (Optional but highly recommended) Are you running a medium/high traffic site? If so, it might be a good idea to check these suggestions to make sure your site’s performance stays up to par.
That’s it!
USAGE
WordPress Popular Posts can be used in three different ways:
- If you’re using the Block Editor you can insert a WordPress Popular Posts block on your sidebar and even anywhere within your posts and pages.
- As a template tag: you can place it anywhere on your theme with
wpp_get_mostpopular(). - Via shortcode, so you can embed it inside a post or a page.
Make sure to stop by the Wiki as well, you’ll find even more info there!
Screenshots
The WordPress Popular Posts block.
The WordPress Popular Posts block on theme's sidebar.
Dashboard widget.
Statistics panel.
FAQ
The FAQ section has been moved here.
Changelog
7.0.1
If you’re using a caching plugin on your website it’s highly recommended to clear its cache after installing / updating to this version.
- Improves compatibility with LiteSpeed Cache, Autoptimize, W3 Total Cache, and Speed Optimizer (formerly known as SiteGround Optimizer.)
- Fixes an issue where the popular posts list may not load on iOS browsers (props to Marlys Arnold and abid76!)
- Fixes an issue where get_views() might not return the expected value (props to robwkirby!)
7.0.0
- Breaking Change: The WordPress Popular Posts “classic” widget will stop working after this version! If you’re using the classic widget please replace it with the WordPress Popular Posts block or the [wpp] shortcode as soon as possible. See release notes for more details.
- Breaking Change: The .widget CSS class has been removed from the WordPress Popular Posts block. If you were using it to style your popular posts block adjustments may be required.
- Native WebP / AVIF support: your thumbnails can now be created as .webp / .avif images without requiring third-party plugins. Check the release notes for more.
- New filter hook to dynamically change the headline of the popular post list (props to abid76!)
- PHPCS / WPCS improvements.
- Minor enhancements / fixes.