How to Display the Most Popular Posts in WordPress

Are you looking for a way to display the most popular posts based on the number of comments? While there’s probably a plugin for this, we have created a quick code snippet that you can use to display the most popular posts in WordPress.

Instructions:

All you have to do is add this code to your theme’s index.php file:

<ul>
<?php $result = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT comment_count,ID,post_title FROM $wpdb->posts ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 0 , 5");

foreach ($result as $post) {
      setup_postdata($post);
      $postid = $post->ID;
      $title = $post->post_title;
      $commentcount = $post->comment_count;

      if ($commentcount != 0) { ?>
          <li><a href="<?php echo get_permalink($postid); ?>" title="<?php echo $title ?>">
          <?php echo $title ?></a> {<?php echo $commentcount ?>}</li>
<?php } } ?>
</ul>

Note: If this is your first time adding code snippets in WordPress, then please refer to our guide on how to properly add code snippets in WordPress, so you don’t accidentally break your site.

If you liked this code snippet, please consider checking out our other articles on the site like: 19 best WordPress plugins for non-profits and how to create a multi-page form in WordPress.