Description
Mostify is a fast, no-bloat popular-posts plugin that turns your WordPress views and comments into ranked lists you can drop anywhere via shortcode, widget, or Gutenberg block.
It uses a pre-aggregated bucket schema (one row per post per time bucket) so ranking queries stay snappy even on sites with millions of pageviews — no on-the-fly aggregation, no JOIN fan-out, no slow wp_postmeta scans.
Highlights
- Page-views counter — AJAX tracking with bot detection, per-visitor cookie deduplication, and a
mostify_should_track_viewfilter for custom rules. - Comments counter — counts approved comments (auto-approved + admin-approved transitions).
- Time-period rankings —
today,yesterday,past_24_hours,this_week,last_week,past_7_days,this_month,last_month,past_30_days,this_year,last_year,past_12_months,all_time. - Custom periods — build any window via
custom_hours_N,custom_days_N,custom_months_N. - 4 list styles — simple, bars, cards, medal (top-3 medal emoji).
- 10 color presets — ocean, sunset, forest, berry, fire, midnight, coral, arctic, earth, neon — plus theme inheritance and custom CSS.
- Display surfaces — shortcode
[mostify], classic widget, server-rendered Gutenberg block, post-editor meta box, auto-insert into the_content. - Admin chart — per-post hourly / daily / monthly histogram with period switcher.
- Performance — 3-tier cache (request memo + object cache + transient), optional batch-write buffer for high-traffic sites.
- Capabilities — role-based access via the
mostify_editandmostify_viewcapabilities. - Privacy — no third-party tracking. View tracking happens entirely on your own server.
Privacy
Mostify stores anonymous, per-post view counts on your own database. No personal data, no IP addresses, and no third-party services are involved. The view-tracking AJAX endpoint sets a single first-party cookie (mostify_v_<post_id>, default 3-hour TTL) used solely for deduplication; cookie name and TTL are filterable. The plugin makes no outbound HTTP calls.
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Mostify Ranking
Installation
- Upload the
mostifyfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install directly from the WordPress admin via Plugins Add New Search “Mostify”. - Activate through the Plugins screen.
- Visit Settings Mostify to configure tracking and view the shortcode builder.
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Drop the shortcode anywhere:
[mostify counter=”views” limit=”10″ period=”this_week”]
…or use Appearance Widgets to drop the Mostify — Popular Posts widget into a sidebar, or insert the Mostify Ranking block in the Gutenberg editor.
FAQ
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Does the plugin call any external service?
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No. View tracking, ranking queries, and chart rendering all happen on your own server. The plugin makes no outbound HTTP calls.
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How are page views counted?
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A small JavaScript snippet sends a one-shot AJAX request after the page loads. The server checks a per-visitor cookie (3-hour window by default, filterable) and a User-Agent allowlist before incrementing the counter. Admins can be excluded via Settings Mostify Exclude admins from tracking.
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Is bot traffic excluded?
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Yes — there’s a built-in User-Agent allowlist covering the long tail of search-engine crawlers, AI scrapers, social link-preview fetchers, and CLI/programmatic clients. You can extend it with the
mostify_bot_patternsfilter. -
Can I customize the rendered HTML?
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Yes. The renderer exposes
mostify_render_html,mostify_list_html, andmostify_list_item_htmlfilters so themes can swap markup, inject columns, or override empty-state output. -
Does it work with caching plugins?
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The view-tracking AJAX call happens after the page is delivered, so static-cached HTML still triggers a fresh tracking call per visitor. Ranking queries use a 5-minute transient + object-cache layer that any cache plugin can extend.
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How do I report a bug?
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Use the Support tab on the Mostify plugin directory page.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Mostify” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsTranslate “Mostify” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.0
- Initial release on the WordPress Plugin Directory.
- Page-views counter with bot detection and per-visitor dedup cookie.
- Comments counter (auto-approved + admin-approved transitions).
- List rendering with 4 list styles and 10 color presets.
- 13 built-in time-period presets plus a custom-period builder (
custom_hours_N,custom_days_N,custom_months_N). - Shortcode, classic widget, Gutenberg block, post-editor meta box, and auto-insert display surfaces.
- Per-post chart with hourly / daily / monthly granularity in the admin meta box.
- Optional batch-write buffer for high-traffic sites.
- Role-based access via the
mostify_edit/mostify_viewcapabilities.