Most Share Posts

The Most Shared Posts plugin for WordPress allows you to display, as a widget, which of your blog posts have the most social shares and are proving to be your most popular content.

Version 1.1.0 – 14th August 2011
hosted on wordpress.org

If you’d like to see this plugin in action, you can see it on this site, or you could check out Kate Morris’ SEO Blog or John Doherty’s SEO Blog. They both helped to test the initial version.

Features

If you have feature requests, bug reports or you just want to show me where you are using the plugin please post a comment below or drop me an email to [email protected].

Fetches Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets and the new Google +1s.
Caches results to ensure good performance. Older posts are cached for longer.
Select which of the 3 social counts to include.
Select how many posts to display in the list, and an age cut-off.
For beginners, it is very easy to install with no necessary customisation.
For advanced users, there are various display options available.
Option to hide the counts and icons.
You can have multiple instances on the same page with different titles (e.g “Most Tweeted Posts” showing just the Tweet counts, or “Most Liked Posts” showing just the FB Likes counts etc.)

Installation

The steps to install ‘Most Shared Posts’ are quite simple:

Upload `most-shared-posts` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Go to the ‘Widgets’ page in the ‘Appearance’ section of WordPress.
Now you can add the widget to different pages of your site. Recommended pages to add the widget: “Sidebar Index”, “Sidebar Single”, “Sidebar Category”.
You can customise the plugin differently for each of these sections should you wish.
NOTE: The plugin throttles how quickly it gathers the social data, to ensure it does not cause any slowness for your users. For small sites with less than 100 posts, this should typically be done in the first hour. For sites with other 2000 posts it could take a day or more.
Now load a page on your blog which should show the widget. This will initiate the first data fetch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I just installed and refreshed the page, but my most shared posts are not at the top of the list?
A: The plugin will take a little time to collect all the data about your posts. It does so in batches so as not to upset the social networks by requesting too much data at once. You should find that it’ll sort itself out and catch up quite quickly.
Q: I just got tweeted but the count hasn’t updated! Why not?
A: The results for each post are cached for varying lengths of time depending on the posts age. Very recent posts (less than 2 days old) are cached for an hour, and then older posts are cached for incrementally longer periods of time. Posts in the last month are cached for 12 hours, posts 1-6 months old are cached for 48 hours and older posts are cached for a week.
Q: My older posts aren’t showing up…
A: When you add an instance of the widget to a sidebar in the WordPress admin section, you can customise how far back you wish to look; the default is 2 years.
Q: Where can I change how many posts are included in the list?
A: When you add an instance of the widget to a sidebar in the WordPress admin section, you can customise how many posts to include; the default is 5.
Q: I activated the plugin, but I don’t see it. 🙁
A: This plugin is a widget, so after activating it you need to go to the Appearance->Widgets section of your WordPress settings and select which pages you’d like it to appear on.
Q: Can I include the count inside a post or a page?
A: Yes – there is now a shortcode option. The shortcode has a few options (all are optional):
```
&#91;most-shared-posts num_posts="5" max_month_age="24" title="Most Shared Posts"&#93;
```
Q: I have no shares. How depressing… help!
A: Assuming you’re providing content worthy of being shared… Make sure you are including sharing buttons on your blog in a consistent fashion. I recommend adding them into your theme, or alternatively:
- Alex Moss of Pleer has created some great social button plugins for Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
- The AddThis plugin is very popular, and provides a variety of sharing buttons.
- At sharethis.com, they provide a variety of sharing plugins.
- The Sharedaddy plugin, part of Jetpack from WordPress.com, provides a range of social buttons.

Changelog

Version 1.0.0 – 4th August 2011

Initial Release

Version 1.0.1 – 5th August 2011

Update on the format of the API requests for added robustness.
Added link to the FAQ on plugin activation.

Version 1.1.0 – 14th August 2011

Can now view social stats in admin area (with or without an active widget).
Added a shortcode option to include within posts/pages.
Data now collected without an active widget.
Improved method for scheduling data collection.
Various code tidying and improvements.

Donate

Please consider a donation, or alternatively enabling the attribution link in the settings:

181 responses to “Most Shared Posts – WordPress Plugin”

rei125

September 19, 2011

i was looking for this plugin!!
Thanks!
i just downloaded it and checked on my “Most Shared Posts” statistics..
but they counts are not correct…
is it that i need some time for it to get the correct statistics?
it has been 30mins since i activated it..

thank you.

rei125

September 20, 2011

it has been one day but the figures are not correct, yes those with “like” are summed correctly but those post without “like” also turns out to be “1”..

Reply

Stock Market

September 23, 2011

very good post, i was really searching for this topic as i wanted this topic to understand completely and it is also very rare in internet that is why it was very difficult to understand

thank you for sharing this.

Regard

Stock Market

Adam

September 24, 2011

Great plugin. I have been looking for something like this for a couple of weeks. Hope it works well with my site. I have a couple of ideas I want to try.
Thanks!

Plop

September 27, 2011

Hello,
this plugin works very well, congrats!
But I’m looking for a way to display the most shared posts in a box with 2 tabs (one for the most read posts, the other for the most shared posts). Is it possible ?
Any help is welcome 🙂

Emanuele

September 29, 2011

Hey Tom, I’m having a problem here.
I have this site http://www.feedbusiness.com.br/ it’s offline to the public yet, but I installed the plugin and I’ve set the widget to show the “Most Shared Post” at index.
Every day I share more than 3 posts, but I take care to share, at least, one of the most shared.

The problem is: the admin page shows ZERO votes to all the posts. What I’m doing wrong?
I use the addthis and sharethis plugin’s to wordpress. ShareThis is installed, and addThis is the code of site.

Can be a conflit problem? Or need a minimum number of shared posts?

tks, anyway.

Gold Silver Tips

October 3, 2011

Very good post, i was really searching for this topic as i wanted this topic to understand completely and it is also very rare in internet that is why it was very difficult to understand.
Thank you for sharing this information.
Regard
Gold Silver Tips

Rey

October 7, 2011

I installed the plugin but nothing icon shows in my post. sir do you know where or what would be wrong?

Gold Silver Tips

October 7, 2011

I read your post that’s really useful information about the market.I really appreciate your post and you explain each and every point very well.Thanks for sharing this information.

Regards

Gold Silver Tips

Intrday Tips

October 8, 2011

Excellent and informative tips.I like your post and it really gives an outstanding idea that is very helpful for all the people on web.
Intraday Tips

flo

October 10, 2011

Excellent plugin

Could you tell me if exist a shortcode to include share results without widget ? for example : in my sidebar ? i don’t tell about [most-shared-posts num_posts=”5″ max_month_age=”24″ title=”Most Shared ] in a post

Thks in advance

lwen

October 13, 2011

Hi Tom, I activated the plugin and display it on the widget area but it only displays title of the widget. I have social share icons installed, but the plugin didn’t display the most share articles.

camera store

October 15, 2011

Good news.This is a great post. I like this topic.This site has lots of advantage. I found many interesting things from this site. It helps me many away..So i want some information for sharing this side with some of my friend. Thanks

Sern

October 20, 2011

Hi Tom, I just install your plugin Version 1.1.0 in my WordPress 3.2.1.

My website have about 600 posts and i already install this plugin for about 36 hours.

when i click ‘Your Most Shared Posts’, it still show no post in this page.

May i know why??

mcx tips

October 20, 2011

Excellent and informative tips.I like your post and it really gives an outstanding idea that is very helpful for all the people on web.
mcx tips

Mcx Tips

October 22, 2011

I really appreciate your post and you explain each and every point very well.Thanks for sharing this information.And I’ll love to read your next post too.

Regards

Mcx Tips

indian stock market tips

October 22, 2011

This post is really nice and informative. The explanation given is really comprehensive and informative. I am feeling happy to comment on this post. I think this is useful information for users-How does the ordinary investor fit into the equation comprising of global factors coupled with manipulation in the stock markets.
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LOL pics

November 3, 2011

Hey Tom,
i need a little help here. I am using taxonomies, and i cannot make it work.
I installed it, added ‘post_type’ => ‘any’ in msp-fetch.php, so it looks like:

 $args = array(
    'posts_per_page' => 500,
    'orderby' => 'date',
    'order' => 'DESC',
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => 1,
    'post_type' => 'any'
  );

And after few days, there is no posts fetched.
Have i missed something?
Thanks
Dusan

Fred

November 4, 2011

Tell me how to get the plugin without the widget in the sidebar with the output of the function?

Jason Cairns

November 10, 2011

Is there any way to pull the image from the post to be displayed next to the article/post title? Cheers 🙂

jnreyt

November 16, 2011

Hi! Thanks a lot for the great plugin. I see you have linkedin in your version of most shared posts. Is it possible to have that in the wordpress plugin?
Cheers

Tom Anthony

Most Shared Posts – WordPress Plugin

Most Share Posts

Features

Installation

Frequently Asked Questions

Changelog

Donate

181 responses to “Most Shared Posts – WordPress Plugin”

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