Why There Is Hope And The “WordPress Popular Posts” Widget Is Being Replaced

So I tried activating this “WordPress Popular Posts” plugin but I got a warning saying something very interesting, take a look at the second image below ok. It had over 200,000 active installations and was last updated 2 months ago but basically, it’s reaching the end of it’s life apparently. I’ve been using this one for years too, it never let me down, but I think it’s time to say farewell. If your not sure what WordPress is, be sure to check out some books on this subject, (affiliate link, we may earn a commission from what ever you may buy). 

    “Important notice for administrators: The WordPress Popular Posts “classic” widget has been removed”

If you read on it goes to say that the plugin widget itself has reached the end of life as of version 7.0. There is now “WordPress Popular Posts block” or short code that will let you display the same widget but with no plugin needed, apparently. I tried to find the short code, there was some tutorial on how to get it to work, but it looked too complicated, so I took matters into my own hands and found a different, alternative plugin.

The replacement that I found is called “Top 10 – WordPress Popular posts by WebberZone”, and it is customizable. But if your site isn’t getting much traffic, most likely you won’t see any data in the Widget itself because it needs the data from your traffic to be able to tell what the top posts are, obviously.

After you install the plugin, you will also notice that the plugin itself is hard to find, which you can find it here… let me show you below:

It’s just called “Top 10”, which I think is kind of stupid, I would rather it said what the plugin said, but what ever, it has over 20,000 installations and that’s good enough for me!.