WordPress.com Popular Posts is a WordPress plugin for Self Hosted WP Sites, it simply displays your popular blog posts on your sidebar based on the data collected by Jetpack by WordPress.Com plugin or WordPress.Com Stats plugins.
Simply install and activate WordPress.Com Popular Posts plugin then visit your site’s admin area Dashboard -> Appearance -> Widgets and drag-drop Popular Posts Widget to your site’s widget area.
Remember this plugin requires one of the following plugins activated on your site:
- Jetpack plugin
- WordPress.com Stats plugin, at least v1.2
Unique Features of WordPress.Com Popular Posts Plugin:
- Support for displaying post visits
- Support for displaying post excerpt
- Internal caching system, to be faster than light
- Support for displaying post thumbnails in the list
- The format of the link is completely customizable
- Support for filters: by category, ID, authors, visits.
- Support for multiple (and different) widgets on a page
- Support for shortcodes to embed the list inside a page/post
- Choose how many links to show, the time period of the stats…
- Catches your visitors’ eye with a list of your most interesting contents
- It doesn’t overload your site: all the stats are stored on WordPress.com