Sadhan Pal

<p><strong>Simple Post View Counter</strong> is a lightweight yet powerful plugin to track how many times your WordPress posts are viewed.</p>
<h3>Key Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>✅ Automatic post view tracking (AJAX-based, works even in incognito mode)</li>
<li>✅ Prevents double-counting on refresh</li>
<li>✅ Built-in bot detection</li>
<li>✅ Display views before content, after content, beside meta, or manually</li>
<li>✅ “Most Viewed Posts” widget with customizable display</li>
<li>✅ Shortcodes for displaying most viewed posts and individual post views</li>
<li>✅ Admin settings page with statistics (total views, average views, top posts, etc.)</li>
<li>✅ Views column in admin post list (sortable by views)</li>
<li>✅ Exclude admin views from tracking</li>
<li>✅ Works with caching plugins</li>
</ul>
<h3>Shortcodes</h3>
<ul>
<li><code>[post_views]</code> <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Display view count for current post<br />
Options: <code>post_id</code>, <code>format="%s views"</code></li>
<li><code>[most_viewed_posts]</code> <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Display a list of most viewed posts<br />
Options: <code>limit="5"</code>, <code>show_count="yes"</code>, <code>show_excerpt="no"</code></li>
</ul>
<h3>Example Usage</h3>
<ul>
<li><code>[most_viewed_posts]</code> <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Show top 5 posts</li>
<li><code>[most_viewed_posts limit="10" show_count="yes"]</code> <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Show 10 posts with view counts</li>
<li><code>[post_views]</code> <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Show current post’s view count</li>
</ul>
<h3>Widgets</h3>
<p>Go to <strong>Appearance <span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-exclude-emoji">→</span> Widgets</strong> and add the <strong>Most Viewed Posts</strong> widget to your sidebar.</p>
<h3>Video Tutorial</h3>
<span class="embed-youtube" style="text-align:center; display: block;"><iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="750" height="422" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/10d_wyQn-Lk?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent" allowfullscreen="true" style="border:0;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox"></iframe></span>
<h3>Theme Function</h3>
<pre><code>`php
</code></pre>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>Developed by Sadhan Pal</p>
<h3>License</h3>
<p>This plugin is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.</p>


Simple Post View Counter – Clean and Fast Post View Analytics

Lightweight post view counter with a widget and shortcodes. Track post views automatically, stop double-counting, and display popular content easily.

MattGeri

WP Geeks

<p>WP Most Popular was born out of frustration in finding a decent plugin which performs one simple task and that is to rank your most popular blog posts.</p>
<p>The plugin keeps a log of your most popular posts based on views and lets you display them in your blog theme with custom styling. You can display popular posts from the last day, 7 days, 30 days or all time.</p>
<p>It also comes with a sidebar widget to let you display your popular posts on your blogs sidebar.</p>
<p>If you are a developer and integrate the plugin in to a theme, you will get a lot more flexibility out of the plugin including the ability to show the most popular custom post types etc.</p>
<p>This plugin was built and is maintained by <a href="https://wpgeeks.com" rel="nofollow ugc">WP Geeks</a>. For extra documentation, videos, snippets and support, visit the <a href="https://wpgeeks.com/product/wp-most-popular/" rel="nofollow ugc">WP Most Popular</a> product page.</p>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<p>There are two ways in which you can use this plugin.</p>
<ol>
<li>As a sidebar widget</li>
<li>Custom function in your theme files</li>
</ol>
<p>Using the widget is the easiest way and recommended for most users. If you are a developer and want to integrate the plugin in to your existing theme, then read the information below.</p>
<p>Firstly, the main function which you will need to include in your theme to fetch the popular posts is called <code>wp_most_popular_get_popular()</code>.</p>
<p>You can pass that function the following parameters in array form:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>limit</strong> (integer)
<ul>
<li>The number of posts you would like to display i.e. 5</li>
<li>Default: 5</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>post_type</strong> (string) / (array)
<ul>
<li>The post type you would like to display</li>
<li>Example: post</li>
<li>Default: All post types</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>range</strong> (string)
<ul>
<li>In what date range would you like to display popular posts in</li>
<li>Accepted: all_time, monthly, weekly, daily</li>
<li>Default: all_time</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Those are the current parameters that the plugin supports. Let’s look at an example of how to display the most recent popular posts in a unordered list.</p>
<pre><code><?php
echo '<ul>';
$posts = wp_most_popular_get_popular( array( 'limit' => 10, 'post_type' => 'post', 'range' => 'all_time' ) );
global $post;
if ( count( $posts ) > 0 ): foreach ( $posts as $post ):
    setup_postdata( $post );
    ?>
    <li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php echo esc_attr(get_the_title() ? get_the_title() : get_the_ID()); ?>"><?php if ( get_the_title() ) the_title(); else the_ID(); ?></a></li>
    <?php
endforeach; endif;
echo '</ul>';
?>
</code></pre>
<h4>Filters</h4>
<p>The following filters are available to you:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>wp_most_popular_list_before</strong> – used to filter the </li>
</ul>
<ul> element of the outputted widget list<br />
* **wp_most_popular_list_after** – used to filter the </ul>
<p>element of the outputted widget list<br />
* <strong>wp_most_popular_list_item_single</strong> – filters for a the list item generated by the widget</p>
<h4>Actions</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>wp_most_popular_list_item</strong> – used for modifying the list output</li>
</ul>


WP Most Popular

Works just as expected :)
Triggers the stat update from JS on the frontend so it works with cache.

Great plugin

WP Most Popular is a simple plugin which tracks your most popular blog posts based on views and lets you display them in your theme or blog sidebar.

Simple Post View Counter – Clean and Fast Post View Analytics vs WP Most Popular