Popularity Contest is a WordPress plugin that uses page views and feedback (comments, trackbacks, etc.) to determine how popular each of your posts are (in relation to each other). The values given to each type of view and feedback are configurable1 and popularity for all posts is recalculated whenever they are changed.
Obviously, since views have not been tracked for older posts they are ranked lower than more recent posts will be – however it’s still pretty cool to have the data on a going-forward basis.
The plugin adds a new tab under Options to allow you to configure the values for each view and feedback type. It also adds a new tab under Dashboard to show you the lists of most popular posts (by category, month, etc.).
Popularity Contest is a true drop-in plugin, with no changes required in the template. However there are optional template tags that can be used to show sidebar lists of popular posts2. There is an included sidebar.php (from the default theme) that shows how to use these template tags.
You can now see the output from the plugin here on my site.
I believe the plugin is fully (and properly) localized, however this is my first attempt at using the WP localization tools so if I’ve done it wrong please let me know.
Last month, I was doing some frantic coding to get Popularity Contest written and ready for release within a 2 week window. As it turned out I had 2 months, so I’ve had a chance to test and use the plugin for the last month – so far so good.
I’ve got a beta ready for public testing: Download from my Plugins page
Writing this was also fun for me because I learned a little more SQL (for the reports) that will certainly be useful in the future.
I’ll be getting this added to the plugin competition soon.
Please post bugs and support questions in this forum thread.
- I’ll be interested to hear what values people are using. [back]
- For example, most popular in this category, month, etc. [back]
This post is part of the thread: Content Presentation – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
This post is part of the following projects: WP Mobile Edition, Popularity Contest. View the project timelines for more context on this post.
This post is part of the thread: Content Presentation – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.
This post is part of the following projects: WP Mobile Edition, Popularity Contest. View the project timelines for more context on this post.
Happy beta tester here: 😉
Permalink: 50
Home: 5
Category: 20
Archive: 20
Feed: 2
Comment: 100
Pingback: 200
Trackback: 400
I’m going to run some regression analysis on this at some point; my big kerfuffle with it to this point is the home and feed views, which are very much dependent on how long an entry stays on the front page / in the feed. During a slow-posting time, stuff will get an unnecessary boost. As you can see, right now I have it way damped, but there’s still something to it.
[I have a home view counting 2.5 as much as a feed view because that’s about the ratio between the two right now. Other folks will have different results.]
Now, it’s time to go build the WP page to display the data for me …
Post Popularity Plugin
Alex has developed a nifty post popularity plugin that I’ve been using off-and-on for the last, oh, month or so. [I called myself a beta tester in the comment I left, but I guess I’m really an alpha tester, eh, Alex?] It powers the popul…
I think the biggest problem I have, from the RSS reader point of view, is that Bloglines keeps telling me you’ve got 7 new updates, when really all that has changed is the popularity of a post has gone down or similar. Apart from that, it looks like a very interesting idea!
It’s only been active for 3+ hours – I’m surprised that is causing a problem already.
Easy enough to add a check not to include popularity in the feeds – done for next release.
Reminder – post support stuff in the thread linked above. Support comments here will be deleted.
This is a freakin’ awsome plug-in. No problems to report thus far. Seems to be working like a charm 🙂
Karl
WordPress Plugin: Popularity Contest
Popularity Contest is a WordPress plugin that uses page views and feedback (comments, trackbacks, etc.) to determine how popular each of your posts are (in relation to each other). The values given to each type of view and feedback are configurable and…
Popularity Contest Plugin (beta 2)
I’ve updated my Popularity Contest plugin with the following changes:
Don’t show reports for categories that have no posts.
Don’t show popularity in feeds.
Please continue posting bug reports and support questions in the forum thread….
Plugin WordPress: Popularity Contest
Popularity Contest è un plugin per WordPress che usa le visualizzazioni delle pagine e il feedback (commenti, trackback, etc.) per determinare quanto sia popolare ogni vostro post (in relazione ad ogni altro). I valori dati ad ogni tipo di visualizza…
It only has been what 5-7 hours since my WP got up and already all this tools. I am overwhelmed but I just cannot stop dl them. Got yours as well. I be back with comments once i’ve worked out
WordPress detected a link to one of my posts, but the Linkback field in the popularity statistics does not reflect the link (it’s still 0).
BTW, these are my settings. I use BE, which led me to change several settings. Home views are disproportinately high so I set them to 0. I reduced Permalink views and increased Feed views slightly. I reduced comments because my responses to comments were padding the results. I reduced pingbacks to limit the effect of cross-links on my blog and then brought trackbacks down in line with the overall scale.
Permalink Views: 6
Home Views: 0
Archive Views: 4
Category Views: 6
Feed Views: 5
Comments: 16
Pingbacks: 20
Trackbacks: 60
Very cool plugin Alex. Nice job and thank you very much.
Not the ordinary run-of-the-mill plugin.
Worked right out of the box. Thanks.
Installed Popularity Contest
Installed Alex King’s Popularity Contest plugin. It keeps excellent stats for the admin on how popular each blog post is. It also shows users a list of the most popular posts by category, month, etc… in the sidebar.
I found this plugin vi…
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I found this site from Google, but… where are the results?
This is a great plug-in. Thanks for creating it!
Thanks Alex, works nicely although I get a mySQL error if I try to update the values with wordpress 2. Still, good enough with the default values to give people a push in the right direction. Thanks very much!
Alex, I’m just looking to add various kinds of stats to a new blog and found this. Any plans to update for WP2 or are you leaving this for the community now? Thanks.
I tested version 1.1 of Popularity Contest with the latest code in the WordPress SVN repository today – everything worked perfectly for me.
Please post any support issues in the WP forums and mail me a link if you want me to take a look at it.
Hello,
I have a script that multi installs and manages wordpress blogs. Can I include your plugin with my package for clients to use?
http://wordpressmanagerdx.com
Thank you.
hehe that’s a clever way to stop comment spam bots
but what i wanted to say was the popularity plugin worked perfectly the first time. I’m very happy with it.
Of course the ONE thing, I’m displaying the results in an orderd list (cuz it’s the Top 10 Most Popular), and it skips #1 and lists out through 11. How could I get it to not skip 1?
thanks for a sweet plugin
derrrr, ez fix i found myself
instead of:
which leaves a blank #1 and then lists #2-@11, do the simpler:
Doesn’t quite work in WP 2.0, does it?
I suggest that because the view stats have not changed at all since I started running the plug in…
I’ve had the same experience as John F. It is true that it the plugin has problems with WP 2, or is there some part of the installation (or something) that I’ve forgotten?
[…] Popularity Contest Plugin (beta3) (alexking.org) […]
Hi Alex,
Thanks for this awesome plugin.
Really appreciate it
Thanks and have fun in Italy!
Hi, got the same problem as John F. and Michelle did. Popularity Contest v1.1 might have problems under wp2.0.1. It just counts comments and nothing else…
This is already fixed in the version on http://dev.wp-plugins.org – a release with the fix and other new features will be coming soon.
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Yeah, Alex. Fantastic work with this plugin. I will add it to my site soon. Thank to you guys our blogs look and work better.
Tried it on WP2.04b (Windows, XAMPP). Got an error during installation: MySQL doesn’t like ” `last_modified` DATETIME DEFAULT ‘NOW’ NOT NULL”. Had to change to:
`last_modified` DATETIME DEFAULT ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’ NOT NULL
Since it had created a table, I had to manually delete the ‘options” table before being to activate it again. AFter that, things seem to be ok. Thanks.
Or you could have followed the instructions on the page to grab the latest version that already has this version-specific MySQL issue fixed.
Thumbs up for Alex. This is an awsome plugin. I just tested it my test blog and it works great, no bugs or errors at all. Will install it on my new blog.
[…] There are also different WordPress Plugins which showcase your most popular posts based upon the amount of traffic the post gets. Alex King’s Popularity Contest WordPress Plugin features the most popular posts based upon page views and feedback from comments and trackbacks to determine how popular each of your posts are compared to each other and generates a list. […]
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[…] Popularity Contest Popularity Contest is a WordPress plugin that uses page views and feedback (comments, trackbacks, etc.) to determine how popular each of your posts are (in relation to each other). The values given to each type of view and feedback are configurable1 and popularity for all posts is recalculated whenever they are changed. […]
Fantastic, easy-to-implement and -use plugin. Thank you very much!
Fantastic plugin, Alex! Thank you!
This is an excellent plugin, nice work.
Do you have any recommendations for filtering the results? The reason I ask it that I’ve observed a ton of hits to one or two pages, all from one ip address. I consider these to be false hits or some sort of attack. How would you suggest that I filter these out?
Thanks again.
You should block them before they get to WordPress using any number of Apache and firewall tools.
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Hi,
Thought you might be interested in some modifications I made to make popularity contest and WP-Cache compatible. You can download the modified popularity-contest.php and read my implementation notes on my blog.
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Hi, I am running WordPress 2 & wanted a plugin to sort my popular posts. Searched for it in Google & what I found was truly amazing – Popularity Contest. It required no code fiddling and installation was a breeze. I am extremely satisfied with the logical results of this plugin & would recommend it to everyone.
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[…] Popularity Contest Plugin Popularity Contest is a WordPress plugin that uses page views and feedback (comments, trackbacks, etc.) to determine how popular each of your posts are (in relation to each other). […]
I’m in Japan.
Very cool plugin!! Nice job and thanks!!!
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muy bueno , gracias 😀
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i just installed this plugin on my blog and i love it! thank you!
[…] Popularity Contest – Calculates the most popular posts on your website using values you provide for page views, comments, trackbacks, etc. [Read More] […]
[…] 1. Popularity Rating/Most Popular Posts Below each post you can now see a popularity percentage. Also, the sidebar to your right shows the most popular posts. This percentage is calculated on the basis of post views and number of comments. The most popular post is given a 100% rating while the rest are calculated on the basis of this post. The ratings are calculated using a wordpress plugin known as Popularity contest. […]
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[…] stráca pod nánosom nových Älánkov. ÄŒo s tým? Ako ukázaÅ¥ pilierové Älánky aj ostatným? Popularity plugin je rieÅ¡enÃm. Po nastavenà váh návÅ¡tevnosti Äi poÄtu komentárov pri Älánkoch, popularity […]
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Hey, Alex, thanks for the great plugin.
Is there a tag that would allow me to display most popular posts for the past 30 days?
Thank you!
Mike
PS Specifically, I’m trying to figure out how to do something like the ‘Recent Popular Posts’ section I see in your blog.
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Any chance of having it work with WP Ratings? It would be great if Pop Contest could calculate how many times the user uses WP Ratings as part of the Popularity Contest results.
[…] Popularity Contest – Monitors your website traffic and gives you reports on your popular posts. Plugin is fully customizable allowing you to set the values used to calculate your posts popularity. [Full Review] […]
[…] Popularity Contest – Monitors your website traffic and gives you reports on your popular posts. Plugin is fully customizable allowing you to set the values used to calculate your posts popularity. […]
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