Description
WordPress Popular Posts is a highly customizable widget that displays your most popular posts.
Main Features
- Multi-widget capable – You can have several widgets of WordPress Popular Posts 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 widgets? 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: do not use the classic WordPress Popular Posts widget with the new Widgets screen!
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 WordPress Popular Posts widget on your block-based Widgets screen please consider replacing it with the WordPress Popular Posts block instead – it has the same features as the “classic” widget and will likely end up replacing it entirely in the future.
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 for some reason you prefer using the “classic” WordPress Popular Posts widget with WordPress 5.8 and beyond please install the Classic Widgets plugin.
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!
Ko-fi | Buy me a coffee | PayPal Me
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.
Screenshots
The WordPress Popular Posts Widget. 
The WordPress Popular Posts Widget on theme's sidebar. 
Dashboard widget. 
Statistics panel.
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- WordPress Popular Posts
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?
- Go to Appearance > Widgets, drag and drop the WordPress Popular Posts widget to your sidebar. Once you’re done configuring it, hit the Save button.
- 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. Under “Templates”, click on
header.phpand make sure that the<?php wp_head(); ?>tag is present (should be right 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:
- As a widget: simply drag and drop it into your theme’s sidebar and configure it.
- 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!
FAQ
The FAQ section has been moved here.
Reviews
Contributors & Developers
“WordPress Popular Posts” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
“WordPress Popular Posts” has been translated into 15 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.
Translate “WordPress Popular Posts” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
5.5.1
If you’re using a caching plugin flushing its cache after upgrading to this version is highly recommended.
- Fixes an issue where the WordPress Popular Posts block would, under specific conditions, output code that may break the page layout (thanks @shoelaced and @themosaurus for the report!)
- Fixes minor variable declaration bug in wpp.js.min.
- Cleans up inline style tag (thanks @gabu69 and Lohen Florent for the suggestions!)
- Other minor fixes & changes.
5.5.0
- Adds the Sort by Average Daily Views option from the classic widget to the WordPress Popular Posts block.
- Adds the WordPress Date Format option from the classic widget to the WordPress Popular Posts block (please see announcements for details).
- Adds new Content Tags: author_name and author_url.
- Improves cached data garbage collection.
- Other minor performances improvements and fixes.
5.4.2
- Fixes a rare issue that prevented some users from seeing the Statistics chart (thanks Zsolt!)
5.4.1
If you’re using a caching plugin flushing its cache after upgrading to this version is highly recommended.
- Widget block: fixes WPP block loading block editor JS files on the front end.
- Adds filter hook to disable Block editor support.
- Improves logic of filter hooks
wpp_excerpt_moreandwpp_title_more. - The Parameters section has been moved to the Wiki (see https://git.io/JEOrX).
5.4.0
If you’re using a caching plugin flushing its cache after upgrading to this version is highly recommended.
- The widget block is no longer an experimental feature and is now available to everyone (but it’s still a WIP).
- Widget block: adds AJAX support to prevent caching plugins from caching your popular posts block.
- Widget block: adds WPML/Polylang support.
- Widget block: fixes widget heading not displaying.
- Widget themes: allow themes to detect the current post so it can be styled differently.
- Fixes
wpp_excerpt_morefilter hook not working (props to SchweizerSchoggi!) - Adds filter hook
wpp_title_moreto allow customization of the prefix added to shortened post titles. - Removes inline JavaScript code from WPP’s dashboard in preparation for WordPress’ CSP adoption.