Post Views & List category posts

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2 plugins have been added to the blogs and activated for all; WP-Postviews and List Category Posts.
The first counts hits per post so you can see which posts are popular (or not).
List Category Posts does exactly what is says, by using a shortcode tag you can have a list of all posts in a certain category be displayed automatically, instead of of having to edit it by hand.

10 thoughts on “Post Views & List category posts”

  1. I can find both in my widgets, but how exactly do I use them? So far I found the wordpress pages not too helpful. Do I use them in the widgets menu or do I have to include them in the posts somehow?

  2. You can use both in both ways, so either as a widget or in the post.
    Let’s start with List category posts;
    To use the widget, go to the widget menu and drag the ‘list category widgets’ to a sidebar of choice. In the 2011 theme you’re using you have 5 sidebars listed on the right. After you add it you select which category you want to see listed, how many posts you want to see listed and a buttload of other options. Click on save after you’ve made your choice and see if you like it.
    To use it IN a post (or a page in your case) you use a shortcode.
    Say you want a nice list of all your ‘Big in Japan 2010′ posts. Then the shortcode would be either (catlist name=big-in-japan-2010) or (catlist id=5083) but instead of () you have to use []. To see the names and id’s of your categories go to posts>categories in the admin panel.
    You can use a lot more options in the shortcode which you can find here:
    http://foro.picandocodigo.net/discussion/251/list-category-posts-documentation/
    So wherever in your post or page that you use that shortcode it will generate that list. So that would be easy for you as you no longer have to manually edit that overview page.

  3. For WP-Postviews you are, at the moment, limited to the widget because it doesn’t support shortcodes. So like for the other widgets go to Appearance>Widgets, drag the Views widget onto any sidebar and select what kind of statistics you would like to see, for example your 10 most popular posts or pages ever.
    At the moment it’ll look crappy because I just added it an hour ago and it’ll only show a handful hits at best of course.

    If and when you settle on a theme and you would like the hits to be displayed on every post (like I have under each post) I can add it to the theme. Just give me a poke for that.

  4. Thanks for the explanations! List category post seems to work fine and I just have to look into the shortcode options a bit more to have it displayed the way I want (right now it only shows the newest 5 posts of a category, it seems). But that shouldn’t be a big problem.
    The Postview widget on the other hand is still a bit resistant and doesn’t seem to display anything at all, no matter which settings I use. Although that could be due to noone having clicked any of the posts since yesterday. Don’t know. I’ve put it in the footer 1 sidebar for testing purposes. Maybe you can have a look if I did something wrong there.
    And in regards to the postview plugin: is there a possibility to see the views on all my posts without having to show them by integrating the plugin into my blog? For example somewhere in my Dashboard?

  5. Regarding List category posts, it’s all in the options: [catlist id=75 numberposts=-1 orderby=title order=asc] for example is what I use for the anime reviews. numberposts=-1 means list all, and then sort them in ascending order, ordered by title. Quite flexible.
    I’ll have a look at your postviews to see what’s going wrong there, it’s a bit weird as the widget there, as is the postviews menu option, but it isn’t listed under your installed plugins. Coffee first, only slept 3 hours so it isn’t making any sense to me just yet. ;)

  6. Been working on simplifying stuff again and it’s not that… simple :D I need my real category ids for the List category posts plugin. If I only use the slugs I get a list of all my postings, because the plugin doesn’t seem to recognise them. Same with the full category name. I already found out that it’s not possible anymore to view the ids in my admin panel. Instead there’s a plugin, which can be used to get them.

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/reveal-ids-for-wp-admin-25/

    Sorry for keeping you busy, but you started this :P

  7. Hmm, could you direct me to a post or page where you’re trying the slugs so I could test a bit myself to see why it’s not working with the slugs for you? I noticed the plugin has been updated several times over the past few weeks, maybe they’re working on it already. Either way, I added the reveal ID’s plugin and activated it on your blog, works like a charm. And by all means, keep me busy. ;)

  8. Thanks again! With the new plugin working I’ve already stopped using the slugs, but feel free to re-use them on my two pages concerning my journeys in Japan and see if you can find the mistake.
    I might come up with new stuff to keep you busy in the following days ;)

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