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As previously noted Popularity Contest had a good run but is no longer recommended. As such, I’ve gone ahead and disabled the default version in the plugin repository on WordPress.org, with an explanatory note.
This post is part of the following threads: Popularity Contest, Content Presentation – ongoing stories on this site. View the thread timelines for more context on this post.
If you want it disabled/removed from the repo, email us at plugins AT WordPress.org
Do you have a way of keeping the plugin visible with a message that it has been discontinued? I was under the assumption that disabling/removing it would just make it go away – one of the main reasons I pushed a new version is to answer the “where did this go/will it be updated?” questions I’ve been getting. I believe having it disappear entirely would lead to more of those.
Alas, no (but I’ve asked for a ‘retired’ option).
Sad to see it go. I really loved Popularity Contest, it was a great plugin.
RE: Why
There certainly are a lot of low-cost solutions out there like GA, KissMetrics and more, but it’s hard to find a solution that let’s you use the data on your site. Such as “Most Popular Posts in Last 30 Days” .. etc. That’s one of the primary reasons I really loved it, it let me use the data on-site rather than just viewing it as a site-owner.
I agree with Jonathan. Showing the most popular posts directly in a sidebar was the whole point of using Popularity Contest for me. Any recommendations for a service that can replace that functionality?
You might try the WordPress.com stats in Jetpack, I think they have something like this.
We (Automattic) should have followed up on this long ago, but it got lost in the shuffle. There is now a Top Posts and Pages Widget in Jetpack that uses the Jetpack Stats to rank the posts: http://plugins.trac.[...]op-posts.php
We dusted it off from some existing code as a result of Popularity Contest being disabled and released it around September. Its possible/likely it could use additional features that Popularity Contest had in which case requests (and especially patches) are always welcome.
[...] I released a version of Popularity Contest that removed all functionality and simply delivered a message that the plugin was discontinued and [...]