This article will show you how to create a special page in WordPress that lists your most popular content. I had enhanced another plugin’s code to allow you to easily do this and he has already incorporated into the latest version!
I have no idea why Wordpess doesn’t simply include the number of page views in the posts file, but it doesn’t. In order to track your page views in a way that you can actually access them, you need to use two different plugins. The good news is that if you acted upon my article 11 Must-Have Plugins for Every WordPress Site, then you already have them. If not, you’ll need to download both of these plugins:
WordPress.com Stats Plugin
WordPress.com Popular Posts Plugin
Since the original author has already included my updates, simply installing the plugin will allow you to create your popular posts page!
1. Create a new page in WordPress. Call it something like “Top 10 Posts” or “Our Most Popular Content” or something like that.
2. Insert the following shortcode into the page. This code creates a nice top 10 list, complete with title, number of views, excerpt, and its cached for performance. Just be SURE you paste this into the WP page in HTML or the editor will screw up the HTML formatting in the format= parameter.
[wp_popular_posts title=” number=10 list_tag=ol format='<a href=”%post_permalink%” title=”%post_title_attribute%”>%post_title%</a> (%post_views% views)<p>%post_excerpt%</p>’ excerpt_length=200 cachename=popular-posts-page]
If you want to make changes to any of the above suggested parameters to retrieve a different number of posts or display things differently, then check out the original author’s WordPress Popular Posts Plugin FAQ.
And how would this article be complete with showing you my most popular content? Here’s our list generated directly via the above shortcode.
XtremelySocial.com Most Popular Content
[wp_popular_posts title=” number=10 list_tag=ol format=’%post_title% (%post_views% views)
%post_excerpt%
‘ excerpt_length=200 magic_number=5 cachename=popular-posts-page]