Are you looking for a way to display the most popular posts using views post meta? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to display the most popular posts using views post meta in WordPress.
You might also need to check out how to track post views without a plugin using post meta.
Instructions:
All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s index.php file:
<?
query_posts('meta_key=post_views_count&orderby=meta_value_num&order=DESC');
?>
Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly copy / paste code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.
If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: Top 10 web hosting companies and how to choose the best domain name registrar.
Thank you for the tips
Thanks for your tips! Very nice
Hey Kevin, how do I display only the most popular from “today”?
Thanks butt i can’t use this tips.please help me simple touch.Thanks to bro
How to display popular post related to specific category on post-pages?? And how to arrange that widget if we add using functions.php??
Just add &cat= after DESC and enter the id number for the category.
this is amazing, thanks so much… i’m having problems with the pages navigation (next_posts_link/previous_posts_link) it shows the right amount of posts but the same post in every page. how can i fix this?? please help!
thanx!
Its hard to say without seeing the code involved. I would suggest sending me an email and ill have a quick look. http://wpsnipp.com/index.php/contact/
Were you ever able to resolve the issue with this user. I am having the same problem in my popular posts page. All the paginated pages show the same popular posts from page one.
[…] We have a nice little tutorial here on How to Display Your Most Popular Posts in the Last 30 Days. WPSnipp.com also have a good article on displaying popular posts using post views data. […]
i’m getting two post only in result. though I have pass posts_per_page=5 to query post.
below is my loop. Can you please let me know where I’m going wrong?
query_posts(‘meta_key=views&orderby=views&order=DESC&posts_per_page=5”)
I have tried you query post as well but I got same result. Only two post in output.
that query looks fine, I would of course assume that you have more than 2 posts. Could be some other code within your template.
This is because only two of your posts have been viewed and actually have a custom field titled “views” created. I had the same problem. Once a post was viewed for the first time, it appeared on the category page.
I’ve tried this code to use in a website I’m building, but for some strange reason it was updating 2 posts, always, and kind of aleatory, it was always the same, but in a few tries, it changed, I don’t really know why.
Searching online, I’ve found somebody using global $post; and $post_id = (int)$post->ID; to get the post ID for use on the update_post_meta(); So I changed my code, and everything is ok now.
Hi Rafael, Interesting hhhmmmm, a few people also said they had issues I wonder if this would fix it. I will test things out and make an update. Thanks for the info….
Hi, I tried to integrate this snippet on my page, but it only works half the way it should do. Everytime a post is clicked, the code snippet also displays the post after this one as viewed by someone. Hope you understand what i mean 😉
Well this snippet works with the following snippet to save the views into postmeta, http://wpsnipp.com/index.php/functions-php/track-post-views-without-a-plugin-using-post-meta/
So if you have both setup it should work fine. The snippet above just lets you order the posts by the post views if you have both snippets setup.
Thank you for your reply. (Unfortunately) I have both setup and it doesn’t work. It’s pretty strange to me…
what version of wordpress are you currently running I have tested it in 3.1.2 fresh install. It could be one of your plugins that is causing problems.
what version of wordpress are you currently running I have tested it in 3.1.2 fresh install. It could be one of your plugins that is causing problems.
I am running 3.1.1. But I don’t think there is a significent difference between them two, isn’t it?
No 3.1.1 should not be an issue, what might cause an issues is a plugin
Fixing my own problem:
orderby=post_views_count must be changed to orderby=meta_value_num meta_value_num was added to the core a while ago: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/10649Robert
Ahh ok cool glad you got things working. Can you post a new link to the bug – I get a not found error.
Actually he`s right. I got only random posts using this code and changing the orderby to meta_value_num actually fixed the problem. Thanks
Daniel you are correct, did some testing have just updated the post, thanks again for the input.
The sorting doesn’t work correctly. My posts ordered like this: 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1,10,11,12 etc.
Any idea to get the right order: 12,11,10,9,8 …?
With a little modification can also work with wp-comments, since it uses the same method:
query_posts('meta_key=views&orderby=views&order=DESC');
I’m not familiar with wp-comments is this a plugin?
How do you set up this to show most popular posts for today, this week or this month?
This is all time I presume.
Thanks.
You can just add a little to the query_post &monthnum=’ . date( ‘n’, current_time( ‘timestamp’ ) )
query_posts(‘meta_key=post_views_count&orderby=post_views_count&order=DESC&monthnum=’ . date( ‘n’, current_time(‘timestamp’))’);
dear Kevin i tried these but it’s not working here is my code
plz help me
these but it’s not working here is my code
query_posts(‘meta_key=post_views_count&orderby=post_views_count&order=DESC&monthnum=’ . date( ‘n’, current_time(‘timestamp’))); if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
dear Kevin i tried
plz help me
your orderby value is not correct,
please reply to Yashmistrey Kevin !!
Sangeeta, I did, in above snippet you can see
orderby=meta_value_num
Thanks
[…] <? query_posts('meta_key=post_views_count&orderby=post_views_count&order=DESC'); ?> Source →Breadcrumbs Without a PluginBreadcrumbs can be a useful navigation technique that offers link to the […]
Got it!
Here’s my code.
<a href="”>
Cool, glad you got things working, this is a link to some sample code you could use as well,
http://wpsnipp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/post-views-per-page.txt
I cant get this working
Like this?
‘dropzone’, ‘posts_per_page’ => 2) ); ?>
have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
<a href="”>
Hi Alec,
If you want to limit the number of posts you would do this
http://wpsnipp.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/posts-per-page-post-views.txt