How to Make a Most Popular Post Widget in Wordpress

I’ve been looking around for different plugins or widgets that created a Most Popular Posts space on my blog. I spent some time looking and never found anything that seemed about right. But I wanted to get that space up on my blog so that I could point new readers to posts that other readers liked.

I tried the Popularity Contest widget and liked the amount of data that it provided, but a) I’m too dumb to get it to work properly, b) it doesn’t capture the full spectrum of what I think makes the posts more popular. Maybe once I figure it out a little more I’ll activate it.

Until then, I’ve created a simple text block in my sidebar that does the job. If you’re new to blogging and want to do the same type of thing, here’s how to do it:

Compile the data from whatever sources you use.

I like Wordpress’s Stat counter because it doesn’t log your activity, which throws off a lot of other counters. When you’re just starting out and don’t have a lot of readers, your activity on your blog can skew your results dramatically (which is one reason Popularity Contest currently doesn’t work well for me.)

Determine which five of your posts are the most popular

Why five? Three posts are not really enough, but ten is a bit too much for young blogs. Plus five is a really easy number of great posts to focus on, which is likely why Darren at Problogger recommends Five Pillar Posts.

Create a lists of those posts in your html editor

It should look like this:
<ul> <li><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.example.com/most-popular-page.html/');" href="http://www.example.com/most-popular-page.html/"title="Title of Most Popular Post">Display Name for Most Popular Post</a></li> <li><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.example.com/second-most-popular-page.html/');" href="http://www.example.com/second-most-popular-page.html/" title="Title of Second Most Popular Post">Display Name for Second Most Popular Post</a></li> <li><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.example.com/third-most-popular-page.html/');" href="http://www.example.com/third-most-popular-page.html/" title="Title of Third Most Popular Post">Display Name for Third Most Popular Post</a></li> <li><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.example.com/fourth-most-popular-page.html/');" href="http://www.example.com/fourth-most-popular-page.html/" title="Title of Fourth Most Popular Post">Display Name for Fourth Most Popular Post</a></li> <li><a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/www.example.com/fifth-most-popular-page.html/');" href="http://www.example.com/fifth-most-popular-page.html/" title="Title of Fifth Most Popular Post">Display Name for Fifth Most Popular Post</a></li> </ul> <p>

You should be able to copy the text above and fill in your domain name, urls, and Title. Save this file and keep it handy so that you can make easy updates without recreating the whole file.

Create a Text Widget in Wordpress

• Go to your admin page, Click on “Presentation” in the top bar, then Click on Widgets in the Buttom Bar.
• Scroll down and create another Text Widget. You may already have some in your Sidebar, but this should create another in the “Available Widgets” section on this page.
• Grab that new text blog and place it in your sidebar where you want it. I recommend that it go either before or after your recent posts somewhere within the top two or three of your widgets. Having it at the top like that means that your readers see it without having to scroll down, thus making it more likely that they’ll click on it.
• Click on the box that appears on the widget after you place it in the sidebar

This creates a box that has a title box and a code box. In the Title box, enter “Most Popular Posts” or whatever you want to title of this box to be. Copy your code from above into the code box.

• Exit out of the widget by pressing the “X” on the widget. Don’t worry, it saves what data you put into it.
• Press the “Save Changes Button.” This is important, because otherwise Wordpress won’t apply your new widget to your webpage. You’ll get a dialog that says “Sidebar Updated. View site >>”.

Click on the “View site >>” hyperlink to make sure it worked.

This will take you to your home page. You might have to click on a page that you don’t have cached, since cached page may not immediately display.

You’re done!

Doing it this way is not the easiest, most efficient way to do it, but it carries with it some advantages:

1. It places your human judgment to the forefront.

Sure, there are programs that can provide the data for you, but in the end I think it’s best to consider that but then make the decision yourself.

2. By not automating the task, it makes you pay attention to some nuances that you may miss if you have a program do it

I learned which titles and trends made some posts more popular than others, so that now when I review what I write, I consider what made other similar posts popular.

3. It allows you to assess information from the many different sources that a single source may miss.

For example, having your feeds run through Feedburner may alter the stats from one particular program or script.

4. It allows you to move posts higher if there were unrepresentative periods of activity.

Some of my earlier posts from last year have pretty high page counts, but I don’t necessarily want those pages to now represent what I’m doing.

One last thing to consider is that your most popular posts will likely stay static for a long time if you post them above the fold. Readers will continue to click on them and read them, which means they’ll continue to do well on all of the different measures you’ll be looking at. Of course, one post that gets Dugg or Stumbled will change all of that, but those types of occurrences usually have pretty dramatic effects blog-wide.

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