WordPress.org

Display the titles of the last x number of posts that readers visited on your blog, and the amount of time elapsed since they visited it, in a variety of forms:

• return them as a string of list items.
• print a ul list with a h3 heading and enclosed as a div.
• as a WordPress widget.

Rationale

• Readers are curious what other readers have found interesting to read. That's why RVP is very addictive. Put it on your site where readers can see it and watch your traffic increase.

Features

• Insanely fast. It has to be because it needs to run on each page load.
• Creates and uses no tables, writes no files, uses no cookies, loads no css or javascript, needs no plugin initialization.
• Produces XHTML-compliant, semantic markup.
• Each IP is identified by and anonymized with a graphical 10x10 icon using Gravatar.
• Can be modified to record and display the posts' publication date, referer data, search keywords or cookies. Whatever you want or what your Privacy Policy allows.
• Comprehensive API to let you do everything you want without touching the plugin source code.

Technobabbly features

• IP addresses are hashed before being stored, so nobody can get them from your database backups. Hashing uses your blog's SECRET_KEY where available, to protect against rainbow tables.
• Uses $_SERVER['HTTP_CLIENT_IP'] or $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR'] instead of $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] where available.
• Uses the WordPress Object Cache. If the posts' data were already retrieved earlier, this plugin will use that instead of querying the database.
• If you list more than 5 items, the plugin retrieves the posts' data in one wp_query, instead of individually.
• Uses the WordPress 2.8 Transients API where available.

Usage

• get_recently_viewed_posts( $max_shown = 10 ) returns a string of li's.
• recently_viewed_posts( $max_shown = 10 ) prints a div
• Configure the widget inside your Widget Admin screen

Sample markup

<div class="recently-viewed-posts"><h3 class="recently-viewed-posts-header">What others are reading right now</h3><div class="recently-viewed-posts-list"><ul class="recently-viewed-posts-list">
    <li class="recently-viewed-posts-item"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E.jpg?s=10&amp;d=identicon" alt=" " width="10" height="10" f />&nbsp;<a href="http://www.blog.com/foobar-post/" class="recently-viewed-posts-link">Title of Post</a> <span class="recently-viewed-posts-timespan">3 seconds ago</span></li>
    <li class="recently-viewed-posts-item"><img src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E1A2B3C4D5E.jpg?s=10&amp;d=identicon" alt=" " width="10" height="10" class="recently-viewed-posts-icon" />&nbsp;<a href="http://www.blog.com/foobar-page/" class="recently-viewed-posts-link">Name of Page</a> <span class="recently-viewed-posts-timespan">2 minutes, 15 seconds ago</span></li>
</ul></div></div>

Demo

http://www.pinoy.ca/eharmony/1616 shows two versions of it in action.