I am calling it 1.0 (instead of 0.97 which had been the next sequential release number) since this is adding some nice, shiny functionality (options panel in admin to control caching and external DB, widget-capable) and since the initial release was over a year and a half ago and it is about time that it comes out of “beta”. (And since the version numbers are basically arbitrary, it doesn’t really matter anyways).

Special thanks for Ernie Oporto for his contributions of the bulk of the widget and options code.

If your Mint install is located in the same DB as your wordpress data, there is no need to install this update.

For those trying out the plugin, please let me know if you run into any problems or bugs.

Anyone have requests for the next feature to add?

Download: mint-popular-posts.zip

Versions:

• 0.9 – March 26, 2006 – Initial Release
• 0.91 – March 28, 2006 – Added wildcards for ignore filter, extension filter
• 0.92 – April 6, 2006 – Bug Fix (thanks Derek!)
• 0.93 – February 20, 2007 – Added ability to pull data from different DB (based on code by erikso below)
• 0.931 – February 21, 2007 – Added README file to download
• 0.94 – February 22, 2007 – Changed $text_to_remove to a comma-separated list
• 0.941 – February 27, 2007 – Bug fix (when caching results from external DB)
• 0.95 – April 15, 2007 – Bug fixes (double-comma can be used in parameters 3 and 4, $pre and $post parameters now working)
• 0.96 – September 5, 2007 – Changed caching mechanism to work with built-in WordPress caching (based on work done by Benjamin Stein)
• 1.0 – December 18, 2007 – Can now be added to layout as a widget. Control panel added in Options section of Admin to control caching, external DB and widget settings. Thanks to Ernie Oporto for contributing to this release.

History:

• The original algorithm was written by Phillip Lindsay of xlab.
• The algorithm was extended by Cody Williams of Project Arcanum.
• I have done the following:
  • Packaged the algorithm into wp-plugin format
  • Included extra options for formatting, and customization in the function-call

Notes: The following options can be set through the WordPress Admin > Options > Mint Popular Posts page

• External DB: If your Mint data is hosted in a different database from your WordPress install, you can indicate this and set the external DB credentials
• Caching: If you would like to take advantage of the caching mechanism, indicate this on the options page
• Widget Options: If you will be using this as a widget and would like to use non-default parameters, you can set up the different parameters to be used in the options section

Function Call (with default settings):

getPopularPosts(
$num_posts = 10,
$prev_days = 0,
$text_to_remove = ”,
$ignore_list = ”,
$ignore_extensions = ”,
$include_count = false,
$include_www = false,
$pre = ‘<li>’,
$post = ‘</li>’
)

Parameters:

1. $num_posts: The number of posts to display (Default: 10)
2. $prev_days: How many days would you like the list to run for? For all posts, enter 0 (default). Any other number (X) will retrieve the top posts in the last X days
3. $text_to_remove: Comma-separated list of the text to remove from each post title that is displayed. For example, if every title begins with “Ellis Web » ” it would be redundant to enter this as part of the link text for every post listed. Use a double-comma (“,,”) if you have a comma inside text that you would like to remove (this way it will not be treated as a field delimiter)
4. $ignore_list: comma-separated list of urls (including http://) that should not be counted in the popular posts list. Wildcard = * or %. Use a double-comma (“,,”) if you have a comma inside text that you would like to remove (this way it will not be treated as a field delimiter)
5. $ignore_extensions: commas-separated list of file extensions to ignore. Wildcard = * or % (Added v0.91)
6. $include_count: should the count for each post be displayed?
7. $include_www: should a “www” be appended to the beginning of every url (changing http://ellisweb.net into http://www.ellisweb.net). (Default: false)
8. $pre: The html that should be included before every post listing (default: <li>)
9. $post: The html that should be included after every post listing (default:</li>)

Usage: <?php getPopularPosts(10,7,”Website Name”); ?> will print out an ordered list of the top 10 posts from the last seven days

Future Plans:

• Allow users to save settings for the plugin in an extension of the Admin > Options menu
• Provide a function to retrieve a list of most popular “watched” items
• Add function that can be called in the loop to retrieve number of hits on a specific page
• Allow option to turn caching on or off (0.96)
• Better Filter settings (0.91)
  • Allow wildcards (0.91)
  • Filter out entries with designated file extensions (0.91)
• Allow retrieval of Mint data from different DB (0.93)
• Changed $text_to_temove to comma-separated list (0.94)
• Allow plugin to be added to layout as a widget