[Plugin: WordPress Popular Posts] Question, Bug Report, and Feature Requests

I just installed the plugin so far and I’m really liking it. It worked right out of the box, fitting into my theme nicely when I embedded a popular posts list in a static page via shortcode. No need for any custom css styling to get it to look right.

First the question:

“WordPress Popular Posts will wipe out from its cache automatically all those posts that have not been viewed more than 30 days from the current date, keeping the popular ones on the list!”

How does this affect the “all time” most popular posts option? Say a post gets a crapload of page views and shoots up to the top of the most popular of all time list, but later on it doesn’t get viewed again for more than 30 days. Will it be dropped from the list at that point even if it still has enough page views to make the cut? I hope not.

Bug report: The default header styling is h2 tags. I tried to use h3 in the shortcode but the plugin didn’t recognize them. Instead of applying them to the header, the plugin displayed the <h3> and </h3> tags around it. I’m running WordPress 3.0.1 and the Thesis 1.8 theme.

Feature requests:

1) I’d love to have the option of using Google Analytics data instead of the plugin’s own database. I’m an admin for a site with 285 posts. I’ve been using Google Analytics and WordPress Stats since launch to collect page view data. Since I just activated WordPress Popular Posts, the plugin won’t accurately reflect the popularity of these older posts. This is the best popular posts plugin I’ve found so far, particularly with the ability to embed in pages (via shortcodes! thanks!). I’d love to be able to use it with my Google Analytics data.

2) Could you add a “yearly” date range to display the most popular posts of the past year as well in addition to the “daily,” “weekly,” “monthly,” and “all time” options?

3) Could you add an option to display only popular pages (no posts), with the ability to exclude individual pages by page id number?