how to build (custom) stats for post views, per month

Question

Does anyone know how I could code something to get the most viewed posts per month (without Jetpack), ideally without having to create a new DB table ?

Maybe there is a smart way to achieve this only using post metas and/or transients.

For the moment, i'm storing an array of stat entries as a post meta, containing a timestamp. Each time the meta is updated, I delete the timestamps < 1 month. It works, but i'm not sure that it is a good solution.

Any ideas ?

Thanks

Answer 1

I think I'd build that upon and already existing plugin that does the counting for me. I have made quite good experience with Post Views Counter as it also lets you use it in WP_Query. But WP-PostViews looks promising as well. Choose one.

Next I'd query posts by view count from a WordPress cron event that runs monthly. And I'd simply save/add the results in an Options API option as array like $data[INTEGER_YEAR][INTEGER_MONTH][INTEGER_POST_ID][INTEGER_VIEW_COUNT]. And pull that off whenever I need it for displaying the high score in a widget or where ever.

Answer 2

You can track posts views with these functions. Create a new file and call it into your functions.php

after you collect enough data, you can create a meta box for Dashboard and you can use a chart module to view post views monthly/yearly etc.

add_action( 'wp_head', 'get_post_id' );
function get_post_id() {
    $postID = get_the_ID();
    return $postID;
}

function getPostViews() {
    $postID    = get_post_id();
    $count_key = 'views';
    $count     = get_post_meta( $postID, $count_key, true );
    if ( $count == '' ) {
        delete_post_meta( $postID, $count_key );
        add_post_meta( $postID, $count_key, '0' );
        return __( '0', 'sagive' );
    }
    return number_format( $count, '0', ',', '.' ) . __( '', 'sagive' );
}


remove_action( 'wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0 );
add_action( 'wp_head', 'setPostViews' );
function setPostViews() {
    if ( ! is_home() && ! is_robots() && ! is_user_logged_in() ) {
        $postID    = get_post_id();
        $count_key = 'views';
        $count     = get_post_meta( $postID, $count_key, true );
        if ( $count == '' ) {
            $count = 0;
            delete_post_meta( $postID, $count_key );
            add_post_meta( $postID, $count_key, '0' );
        } else {
            $count++;
            update_post_meta( $postID, $count_key, $count );
        }
    }
}