Description
Simple Post View Counter is a lightweight yet powerful plugin to track how many times your WordPress posts are viewed.
Key Features
- ✅ Automatic post view tracking (AJAX-based, works even in incognito mode)
- ✅ Prevents double-counting on refresh
- ✅ Built-in bot detection
- ✅ Display views before content, after content, beside meta, or manually
- ✅ Most Viewed Posts” widget with customizable display
- ✅ Shortcodes for displaying most viewed posts and individual post views
- ✅ Admin settings page with statistics (total views, average views, top posts, etc.)
- ✅ Views column in admin post list (sortable by views)
- ✅ Exclude admin views from tracking
- ✅ Works with caching plugins
Shortcodes
[post_views]Display view count for current post
Options:post_id,format="%s views"[most_viewed_posts]Display a list of most viewed posts
Options:limit="5",show_count="yes",show_excerpt="no"
Example Usage
[most_viewed_posts]Show top 5 posts[most_viewed_posts limit="10" show_count="yes"]Show 10 posts with view counts[post_views]Show current post’s view count
Widgets
Go to Appearance Widgets and add the Most Viewed Posts widget to your sidebar.
Video Tutorial
Theme Function
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Credits
Developed by Sadhan Pal
License
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.
Screenshots
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Installation
Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/simple-post-view-counter/ directory, or install the plugin via the WordPress plugins screen directly.
Activate the plugin through the Plugins screen in WordPress.
Go to Settings Post Views to configure options.
Add the Most Viewed Posts widget, use shortcodes, or call the function in your theme.
FAQ
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Does it work with caching plugins?
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Yes, view counting is AJAX-based, so it works properly with caching.
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Will it count admin views?
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By default, admin views are excluded (you can enable/disable this in settings).
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Can I show the view counter anywhere manually?
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Yes, use the [post_views] shortcode or the spvc_get_post_views() function in your theme.
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Does it prevent bots from inflating the count?
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Yes, it includes basic bot detection and ignores common crawlers.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Simple Post View Counter – Clean and Fast Post View Analytics” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
Initial release
Automatic view tracking
Shortcodes [post_views] and [most_viewed_posts]
Widget for most viewed posts
Admin settings page with statistics
Prevents double counting on refresh
Works in incognito/private mode
Basic bot detection