WP Popular Posts is a highly customizable plugin that displays your most popular posts. PSA: Plugin has been renamed as WP Popular Posts! See the announcement for more details. Main Features Multiple Popular Posts Lists – You can have several Popular Posts lists on your blog, each with its own setti
PricingFree downloadThe WordPress.org download is free. Pro versions, add-ons or external services may cost extra.
CompatibilityRequires WordPress 6.2 and PHP 7.4.
SourceWordPress plugins · Oct 18, 2026
01 / Source details
About this tool.
WP Popular Posts is a highly customizable plugin that displays your most popular posts.
PSA: Plugin has been renamed as WP Popular Posts!
See the announcement for more details.
Main Features
Multiple Popular Posts Lists – You can have several Popular Posts lists on your blog, each with its own settings!
Time Range – List those posts of your blog that have been the most popular ones within a specific time range (eg. last 24 hours, last 7 days, last 30 days, etc)!
Custom Post-type support – Want to show other stuff than just posts and pages, eg. Popular Products ? You can !
Thumbnails! – Display a thumbnail of your posts! ( see the FAQ section for more details .)
Statistics dashboard – See how your popular posts are doing directly from your admin area.
Sorting options – Order your popular list by comments, views (default) or average views per day!
Custom themes – Out of the box, WP Popular Posts includes some themes so you can style your popular posts list (see Widget Themes for more details).
Use your own layout! – WPP is flexible enough to let you customize the look and feel of your popular posts! (see customizing WPP’s HTML markup and How to style WP Popular Posts for more.)
Performance Tools! – WP Popular Posts includes a few options to make sure your site’s performance stays as good as ever! (see Performance for more details.)
REST API support – Embed your popular posts in your (web) app! (see REST API Endpoints for more.)
Elementor support – Are you building sites with Elementor? There’s a popular posts widget for it too!
Disqus support – Sort your popular posts by Disqus comments count!
Polylang & WPML 3.2+ support – Show the translated version of your popular posts!
WordPress Multisite support – Each site on the network can have its own popular posts list!
Other Features
Shortcode support – Use the [wpp] shortcode to showcase your most popular posts on pages, too! For usage and instructions, please refer to the Installation section .
Template tags – Don’t feel like using blocks? No problem! You can still embed your most popular entries on your theme using the wpp_get_mostpopular() template tag. Additionally, the wpp_get_views() template tag allows you to retrieve the views count for a particular post. For usage and instructions, please refer to the Installation section .
Localization – Translate WPP into your own language .
WP-PostRatings support – Show your visitors how your readers are rating your posts!
PSA: The classic WP Popular Posts widget has reached End-of-Life
The classic WP Popular Posts widget doesn’t work very well with the block-based Widgets editor introduced with WordPress 5.8.
This new Widgets editor expects WordPress blocks instead of regular WordPress widgets. If you’re using the classic WP Popular Posts widget please follow the Migration Guide to replace it with the WP Popular Posts block, the [wpp] shortcode, or the WP Popular Posts widget for Elementor.
Bjorn from wplearninglab.com was kind enough to create a video explaining how to use the new block for all of you visual learners:
Support the Project!
If you’d like to support my work and efforts to creating and maintaining more open source projects your donations and messages of support mean a lot!
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WP Popular Posts is now also on GitHub !
Looking for a Recent Posts widget just as featured-packed as WP Popular Posts? Try Recently !
Credits
Flame graphic by freevector/Vecteezy.com.
See it in action
Screenshots & previews.
The WP Popular Posts block.The WP Popular Posts block on theme's sidebar.The WP Popular Posts widget for Elementor.Dashboard widget.Statistics panel.
02 / Source details
Getting started.
Please make sure your site meets the minimum requirements before proceeding.
Automatic installation
01Log in into your WordPress dashboard.
02Go to Plugins > Add New.
03In the “Search Plugins” field, type in WP Popular Posts and hit Enter.
04Find the plugin in the search results list and click on the “Install Now” button.
Manual installation
05Download the plugin and extract its contents.
06Upload the wordpress-popular-posts folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
07Activate the WP Popular Posts plugin through the “Plugins” menu in WordPress.
Done! What’s next?
08Please see the Usage section below to learn how to add a popular post list to your site. Once you’re done, keep reading.
09If you have a caching plugin installed on your site, flush its cache now so WPP can start tracking your site.
10If you have a plugin that minifies JavaScript (JS) installed on your site please read this FAQ: Is WP Popular Posts compatible with plugins that minify/bundle JavaScript code?
11If you have a security / firewall plugin installed on your site, make sure you allow WPP access to the REST API so it can start tracking your site.
12Go to Appearance > Editor > Theme File Editor. Under “Theme Files”, click on “Theme Header” ( header.php ) and make sure that the <?php wp_head(); ?> tag is present (it should be somewhere before the closing </head> tag).
13(Optional but highly recommended) Are you running a medium/high traffic site? If so, it might be a good idea to check these suggestions to make sure your site’s performance stays up to par.
That’s it!
USAGE
WP Popular Posts can be used in four different ways:
14If you’re using the Block Editor you can insert a WP Popular Posts block on your sidebar and even anywhere within your posts and pages.
15As a template tag: you can place it anywhere on your theme with wpp_get_mostpopular() .
16Via shortcode , so you can embed it inside a post or a page.
17If you’re using Elementor on your site you can use the WP Popular Posts widget for Elementor .
Make sure to stop by the Wiki as well, you’ll find even more info there!
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