WordPress Expert : Create a Top ten list of your blog posts for a set time interval

One great way to create new list of posts on your blog’s sidebar is to create a top ten list. You can create a Top ten list within the last 30 days, 6 month and 1 year. One of our past clients had the need for this feature.

The way to achieve this, we created 3 functions, listPopularPosts1month, listPopularPosts6months and listPopularPosts.

For listPopularPosts1month we added in the functions.php file the following code:

function listPopularPosts1month() {
global $wpdb;
$strBuidler = '';
$today = date("Y-m-d H:i:s"); //Today's date
$daysago = date("Y-m-d H:i:s",strtotime(date('Y-m-j H:i:s')) - (30 * 24 * 60 * 60)); //Today - 1 day

$result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count, ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date BETWEEN '$daysago' AND '$today' ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 5");

foreach ($result as $post) {
setup_postdata($post);
$postId = $post->ID;
$title = $post->post_title;
$commentCount = $post->comment_count;

$thumb2 = get_post_meta($post->ID, "Thumbnail", true);

if ($commentCount != 0) {
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

' . $title . ' ';
$strBuidler .= '(' . $commentCount . ')';
$strBuidler .= '

';
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

';
}
}

return $strBuidler;
}

For listPopularPosts6months we added in the functions.php file the following code:

function listPopularPosts6months() {
global $wpdb;
$strBuidler = '';
$today = date("Y-m-d H:i:s"); //Today's date
$daysago = date("Y-m-d H:i:s",strtotime(date('Y-m-j H:i:s')) - (180 * 24 * 60 * 60)); //Today - 1 day

$result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count, ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_date BETWEEN '$daysago' AND '$today' ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 5");

foreach ($result as $post) {
setup_postdata($post);
$postId = $post->ID;
$title = $post->post_title;
$commentCount = $post->comment_count;
$thumb1 = get_post_meta($post->ID, "Thumbnail", true);

if ($commentCount != 0) {
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

' . $title . ' ';
$strBuidler .= '(' . $commentCount . ')';
$strBuidler .= '

';
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

';
}
}

return $strBuidler;
}

and for listPopularPosts we added :


function listPopularPosts() {
global $wpdb;
$strBuidler = '';

$result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count, ID, post_title FROM $wpdb->posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 5");

foreach ($result as $post) {
setup_postdata($post);
$postId = $post->ID;
$title = $post->post_title;
$commentCount = $post->comment_count;

$thumb3 = get_post_meta($post->ID, "Thumbnail", true);

if ($commentCount != 0) {
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

' . $title . ' ';
$strBuidler .= '(' . $commentCount . ')';
$strBuidler .= '

';
$strBuidler .= '

';

$strBuidler .= '

';
}
}

return $strBuidler;
}


To modify the time length of the script go the the code line that creates the daysago variable like:

$daysago = date("Y-m-d H:i:s",strtotime(date('Y-m-j H:i:s')) - (30 * 24 * 60 * 60)); //Today - 1 day

And switch 30 to the number of days you desire.

To display on your sidebar add the following to your sidebar.php file”


echo(listPopularPosts1month());
echo(listPopularPosts6months());
echo(listPopularPosts());