How to Create a Most Popular Posts page in WordPress

This tutorial will help you to create a page with top 10 most popular by views posts in WordPress. To do this you need to create the sort by injection.

First you need to create a popular.php file and paste the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Most Popular
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

    <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

    <?php
    $i = 1;
    $orderby="meta_value_num";
    $order="DESC";

    // create the sort by injection
    $posts = query_posts('meta_key=hits&orderby='.$orderby.'&order='.$order.'');

    if (have_posts()) : ?>

    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>		

    <?php include("_popular.php"); ?>

    <?php $i++; unset($alt); ?>

    <?php endwhile; endif; ?>

 <?php get_sidebar();?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Now create another file _popular.php and add the following piece of code:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($post->ID)?>" title="<?php echo $post->post_title; ?>"><?php echo $post->post_title; ?></a></h1>
<?php echo $post->post_excerpt; ?>

In the end last step is setting up the page. To do this go to your WordPress dashboard, and click Pages > Add New. Create a new page with title “Most Popular” and then in the “Page Attributes” window, set the “Template” to “Most Popular”.