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Want to display your most popular posts based on views? This can be a powerful tool to engage your audience by showing them what’s already creating a buzz on your website. By using post views post meta, you can easily sort and display your posts based on popularity. However, achieving this isn’t always clear-cut. That’s why in this article, we’ve made it easy and will show you exactly how to use views post meta to display your most popular posts on WordPress.
function wpturbo_most_popular_posts( $number = 5 ) {
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => $number,
'meta_key' => 'post_views',
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'DESC',
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );
if ( $query->have_posts() ) {
while ( $query->have_posts() ) {
$query->the_post();
the_title();
echo '<br>';
}
wp_reset_postdata();
}
}
add_action( 'wp_footer', 'wpturbo_most_popular_posts' );
```
This snippet will display the titles of your most popular posts (based on the `post_views` meta key) in the footer of your site. You can change 'wp_footer' to any other hook based on where you want the popular posts to be displayed.
The first line of the code snippet generates a function named wpturbo_most_popular_posts(), with an optional parameter $number which defaults to 5. This function will be responsible for fetching and displaying the most popular posts on your WordPress site.
Firstly, an array of arguments ($args) is defined which is later used in a new instance of the WP_Query class.
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => $number,
'meta_key' => 'post_views',
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'DESC',
);Here, post_type is set to ‘post’, which tells WordPress we’re interested in posts only. Then, the number of posts per page (posts_per_page) is set to $number, which we initially set to 5.
The meta_key is set to ‘post_views’, which is the custom field that stores the view count for each post. The orderby key is set to ‘meta_value_num’, which means the posts will be ordered by numerical value of the ‘post_views’ custom field. Lastly, the order key is set to ‘DESC’, indicating we want the posts with the highest view count to appear first.
The next step involves running a new instance of WP_Query with the $args array as an argument:
$query = new WP_Query( $args );Now we move on to checking if the query has posts and then looping through the posts. For each post, we display the title of the post followed by a line break <br>.
if ( $query->have_posts() ) {
while ( $query->have_posts() ) {
$query->the_post();
the_title();
echo '<br>';
}After displaying the posts, it’s important to reset the post data. This is to ensure that our custom query does not interfere with other loops or post-related functions on the page.
wp_reset_postdata();Lastly, we’ll hook our wpturbo_most_popular_posts() function into the wp_footer action, which simply means that the function executes right before closing the </body> tag.
add_action( 'wp_footer', 'wpturbo_most_popular_posts' );This will cause our most popular posts to be displayed in the footer of the site. However, you can choose a different hook, depending on where you want the list to appear.