WordPress Plugin: Display Your Best Stuff With Popularity Contest

There are several must have WordPress plugins that every blog should use if you have a self hosted WordPress blog, but there are also several plugins that are extremely valuable to certain types of blogs. Unless your blog mostly deals with reporting news, or talks about things that are quickly outdated, your blog should probably use the Popularity Contest plugin.

Popularity Contest is a plugin that keeps track of your website traffic and automatically displays your most popular posts for you. This can prove extremely beneficial, as it helps readers that are new to your site find some of your best works and hopefully convince them to subscribe to your feed. The other benefit this plugin provides is a permanent link in the sidebar that will provide some extra link juice for these posts.

Once you’ve uploaded and activated Popularity Contest, you’ll find that this plugin is pretty easy to set up. You’ll want to determine where you want your popular posts to be displayed in your sidebar and paste the following code:

<?php if (( (is_home()) or (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (is_search() or (is_404()) or ($notfound == '1'))) && (function_exists('akpc_most_popular'))) { ?>

<h2>My Popular Posts</h2>
<div class="box">
<ul><?php akpc_most_popular(); ?></ul></div>
<?php } ?>

<?php if ((is_archive() && is_month()) && (function_exists('akpc_most_popular_in_month'))) { ?>

<h2>Most Popular Posts of <?php the_time('F Y'); ?></h2>
<div class="box">
<ul><?php akpc_most_popular_in_month(); ?></ul></div>
<?php } ?>

<?php if ((is_category()) && (function_exists('akpc_most_popular_in_cat'))) { ?>

<h2>Most Popular Posts in '<?php single_cat_title(); ?>'</h2>
<div class="box">
<ul><?php akpc_most_popular_in_cat(); ?></ul>
</div>
<?php } ?>

If you use this code above, it will not only display your most popular posts in your sidebar, but it will actually add your individual categories most popular posts within that category, and display the most popular archive posts within your monthly archives.