As your website grows, you may eventually want to display specific posts more prominently so that your readers don’t miss them. Many themes come with a ‘recent posts’ feature that lists your latest work. However, if you’d rather showcase your high-traffic content, you might need a WordPress popular posts plugin.
A decent popular posts plugin should give you some control over what type of content you want to display. For instance, many plugins enable you to show your most-viewed posts, or your articles with the most comments. However, you can also use tools with more advanced functionality if you want additional filtering options.
In this article, we’ll discuss our favorite WordPress popular posts plugins, most of which are free. Let’s dive right in!
Best WordPress popular posts plugins 🔝🔌
If you want an easy way to highlight your best content, each of the following plugins can provide a solution. However, the best option for you will depend on the depth of features you require.
1. WordPress Popular Posts
Our first recommendation is the WordPress Popular Posts plugin. As the name suggests, this tool enables you to show your most popular posts and control how they’re displayed.
For instance, you can feature your most recent articles that fall within a selected date range. Alternatively, you can display your most popular articles based on the number of views, comments, and more. Besides that, this tool supports custom post types so you can showcase various types of content.
WordPress Popular Post comes with a handy widget that you can add multiple times to the same area. For instance, if you want to display both your latest blog posts and your top-rated products in your sidebar, you can do so with this feature. Plus, you can customize each widget separately to show post thumbnails, author names, number of views, and more.
Key features ⚙️
- Shortcode generator
- Custom CSS support
- Statistics dashboard
- Multiple sorting options
- Customizable templates
- Caching
- Disqus integration
💰 Pricing
Free.
Note: Some managed WordPress hosts block this plugin because it writes to the database on every visit (to track popularity). If you’re hosting at Kinsta, Presslabs, or some other hosts, you’ll want to choose a different option.
2. Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget
Next, we have the Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget plugin. As the name suggests, this tool enables you to display trending articles using a WordPress slider or widget.
Similar to other tools on this list, the popularity of a post is determined by either the number of views or comments it has.
The great thing about this tool is that it’s highly straightforward. You can use a simple slider shortcode to place popular posts on a page, or the widget to add it in a sidebar.
Furthermore, you can use gridboxes and carousels to showcase more posts in more detail. And, you can leverage additional shortcodes to adjust the parameters of these eye-catching sliders.
Key features ⚙️
- Add trending sliders, gridboxes, and carousels with shortcodes
- Add trending post widgets in a sidebar
- Modify slide parameters with additional shortcodes
- Display post popularity by post views or comment count
- Gutenberg block support
💰 Pricing
The Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget plugin is completely free. However, there is a Pro version of the tool, which includes additional slider views and featured post options. But, you can only get it in the Essential Plugins Bundle, which costs $199.
3. Top 10
Top 10 is a feature-rich WordPress popular posts plugin. Like our first recommendation, this tool enables you to highlight various posts through the use of widgets and shortcodes, which you can customize as you like.
Even though it’s called ‘Top 10’, you can choose to display near-unlimited posts from your selected date range. You can also customize them to show details such as post thumbnails, excerpts, author names, and more.
Top 10 automatically counts all your page and post views, which you can use to display your most popular content. You can even use a custom featured image or your article’s first image as its thumbnail.
Moreover, Top 10 comes with a built-in caching system to limit its impact on your site’s loading times. Also, it’s compatible with popular caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.
Key features ⚙️
- A choice of widgets and shortcodes
- Post exclusions
- Custom CSS support
- Tracking dashboard
- Developer-friendly code
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance
💰 Pricing
Free.
4. Jetpack
Jetpack is a popular all-around plugin that supercharges your WordPress site with tons of features, such as security tools, backups, social media integration, and more. It also comes with a popular posts feature called The Posts and Pages Widget.
This feature offers basic functionality for up to ten pieces of content. You can show the widget anywhere you want on your site using the [jetpack_top_posts_widget] shortcode. Alternatively, you can add it to your theme template file if you don’t mind digging into your website’s code.
You can choose to display your popular posts as a list or grid and use multiple filters to customize the look of your widget. Since there’s a chance you’re already using Jetpack, this solution can help you avoid overloading your database with additional plugins.
This is also a great option if your host bans other popular posts plugins. Jetpack’s servers do the heavy lifting of tracking your most popular content.
Key features ⚙️
- Activity log
- Malware and spam protection
- Automatic updates
- Built-in content delivery network (CDN)
- Site analytics
- Design tools
- Multiple third-party integrations
💰 Pricing
Free for popular posts feature.
5. Display Posts
Our final recommendation is Display Posts, a WordPress popular posts plugin that enables you to create powerful custom queries. For instance, you can generate a shortcode that shows posts from a particular category or use other parameters such as the comment or share counts.
You can also customize your popular posts display with CSS and choose to include details such as the thumbnail, excerpt, and more. This makes the plugin highly flexible and adaptable to your theme.
This tool comes with multiple extensions. For instance, you can add pagination, display listings in alphabetical order, and more.
Key features ⚙️
- List or grid display
- Custom image sizing
- Events listing
- Developer-friendly filters
- Extensive documentation
💰 Pricing
Free.
Start showing WordPress popular posts today 😎🗓️
Showcasing your best work can help you grow a loyal readership. However, the more content you feature on your site, the more difficult it becomes for visitors to find your cornerstone posts. Therefore, it’s smart to use a dedicated tool to help you display your most notable work.
In this article, we’ve shared five of the best WordPress popular post plugins. WordPress Popular Posts, Top 10, and Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget are excellent free options to help you feature your latest or most popular work. If you need more advanced styling features, you can give Display Posts a try. Otherwise, if you just want basic post listing functionality, Jetpack will get the job done.
If you want to use Jetpack, you can follow our guide on how to display popular posts with Jetpack to get up and running.
Do you have any questions about these popular post plugins for WordPress? Let us know in the comments section below!
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