Most Commented Posts Revealed

A neat Wordpress plugin called “Most Commented Posts”, could be very useful for bloggers planning a trip away who need to fill a post slot with something weighty and useful for their readers in advance of their trip. Actually, it’s actually a widget that you can render in your sidebar, or wherever, but I figured there was a more creative way to use it than simply have it display the top commented links permanently if dynamically in the sidebar.

Here’s what I did. Install and activate the plugin (instructions on the site), slot it (temporarily) into the bottom of your sidebar. You’ll have to edit the plugin if you want to increase the default maximum beyond 10 (I wanted to find the top 20, so a quick replace of the instances of max 10 did the trick). Refresh your homepage and there’s your top 20 list of most commented posts. Next thing is to select the list, view and copy the source code. Now, disable the widget so that the links don’t show up any longer.

Create a new post, and add some discussion telling your readers about how these are the most commented posts on your blog. Paste in the source code you copied before, make sure it’s formating properly, save the draft and then prune down the top 20 until you have a “choice” 20 that you think will most appeal to your readership.

You can of course insert a little blurb with each link, perhaps highlighting some of the comments already made and especially asking readers to check out the various posts and leave their own thoughts. It’s a great way of, leveraging using your post archives especially if you have some older posts that drew lots of attention or were added to social bookmarks at the time.

Meanwhile, I’d love to see this post in the top list next time I run the plugin, so please let me know your thoughts in the comments box below.