Not that all of your content isn’t great (at least in your own eyes), but some of those posts are just, somehow, better than the rest. It could be due to the typical nature of subjects, the brilliant way they were written, the writers themselves or any of the reasons really. Point is, after a while, some of your content will stand out from the rest in sheer quality, number of shares and/or comments received, or a combination of all.
These great posts will bring you even more traffic and joy if you draw attention to them instead of leaving them in a forgotten corner of your website to gather dust.
Here is a list of Top 5 Popular Posts WordPress Plugins.
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WordPress Popular Posts
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Usage Stats: 200K+ Active Installs
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Rating: 4.5/5
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Available at: WordPress.org
A free, brilliantly customizable widget to display your most popular posts
The vast, vast fan following for this widget is no hoax – WordPress Popular Posts is pretty awesome.
The translatable, multisite compatible plugin shows your popular posts in a widget which you can customize and place anywhere. Each individual widget gets its own separate settings, stats, template tags, shortcodes, time range (for updates on popular posts), styles etc.
The widget can handle custom post types and multiple placements on single page. Posts are displayed with a thumbnail, and the widget can be customized to look and feel like a part of overall site theme.
It’s also free, because there’s no price tag for sheer awesomeness.
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Popular Widget
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Usage Stats: 10K+ Active Installs
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Rating: 4.6/5
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Available at: WordPress.org
This is another sweet little popular posts widget.
The widget lets you specify day range (to evaluate posts for popularity and update accordingly, default being 1 year). Other notable, super easy features let you specify title and excerpt lengths, and optional display for view count, comments, thumbnails, excerpt, et al.
You get a decent category filter within the widget and custom field options of viewed counts too.
It’s a nifty widget that’s a joy to use.
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Post Hit Counter
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Usage Stats: 5K+ Active Installs
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Rating: 4.8/5
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Available at: WordPress.org
This isn’t strictly a widget that showcases the popular posts. It simply gives the ‘evidence’ and leaves the rest to users.
Post Hit Counter displays the number of times a post has been opened/viewed/clicked and the numbers are visible to admin (post editor and frontend widget) and site visitors (individual posts). The higher the number, the more popular a post, and the more likely it is to draw even more visitors in (the Flash Mob principle).
You can toggle the view count on/off with shortcodes on certain posts, show the posts with highest view count inside a widget, specify certain post types/user roles to be taken into evaluation for popular post display, and more.
It’s simple, lightweight, and efficient.
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WP Tab Widget
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Usage Stats: 80K+ Active Installs
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Rating: 4.8/5
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Available at: WordPress.org
JavaScript junkies made this smart plugin, and you can’t help but love it.
WP Tab widget loads ‘popular posts’ only as needed (thanks to AJAX), which makes the widget next to ‘weightless’ in terms of performance and loading time.
You can configure the widget settings to show posts based on view count/recent/most comments/tags, control how tabs are ordered and how many posts to show, toggle thumbnail display, post date, number of comments, excerpt, etc.
The plugin is a total package – complete with in built caching, pagination, easy customization with CSS and loads of brilliant effects.
It’s a free plugin – and if you think it will badger you to register or push its products on your admin dashboard, think again. WP Tab Widget does nothing of the sort, and a near-100k installs stand for that.
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Top Posts and Pages Widget by Jetpack
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Usage Stats: 1 million+ Active Installs (for Jetpack)
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Rating: 4/5
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Available at: Jetpack.com
The Top Posts & Pages Widget by Jetpack can be get for free (available under WordPress.com Site Stats), so that’s one question answered.
The widget is simple and cute, and for those who already love and trust Jetpack will just have one tiny widget to add from jetpack settings tab from their dashboard.
The module lets you display your most ‘liked’ posts or up to 10 posts with the highest view count over the last 24-48 hours. You can specify whether how many posts to show (max. 10), page types to display (page/post/media), and how to display them within the widget (list or grid)
There are shortcodes for refined control over widget display and placement. The module can also be fitted right into a theme template file.
