Determining your most popular blog posts

When you figure it out, please let the world know!

Posted by Don on 2007/01/22

What about a ratio. Perhaps taking into consideration comments, posts and profile hits from the day it was posted and working out a ratio. Or having some kind of formula to give you a point between 0 & 5. Useless info :)

Posted by Stefano on 2007/01/22

Ultimately an algorythm is the best way to go. Deciding how to weight the various factors which make it up is the subjective and tricky part.(On a side and rather internal note, it's funny how the scoring of web pages has become such a topic of conversation across so many aspects of Quirk recently - a sign?).

Posted by Rob on 2007/01/22

You could invite the readers to up or down on your posts, just like digg...

Posted by Smith on 2007/01/22

we're using Alex King's Popularity Contest wordpress plugin. http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=popularity-contest we're still getting data in, but i like the way you can apply your own weighting to various factors such as permalink access, trackbacks, comments etc

Posted by thescott on 2007/01/22

Thanks for all the ideas - keep 'em coming. We'll let you know what we decide to do.

Posted by Sarah on 2007/01/23

look look. I am advertising the conference. Nice of me, dont you think :P :P Looking forward to it.

Posted by Stefano on 2007/01/23

Because in some small way we are being creative with this blogging lark, I'm tempted to start with a purely subjective list of my favourites and then apply a weighted combination of links (technorati or google link directory), visits (sketchily assuming that most new articles spend roughly the same amount of time on the front page, thus negating this time) and comments. Though the popularity contest widget looks like a good bet

Posted by The Muso on 2007/01/23

Hey nice one. Thanks Stefano!

Posted by Rob on 2007/01/23

Maybe the way to go isn't necessarily to only display 'top posts' based on a variety of stats e.g. comments, trackbacks etc. but rather to 'manually' use your posts archive to it's maximum potential. What I mean by that is, keep your material in your readers faces where they can see it an access it, rather than forcing them to go hunting into your archives i.e. you may have written a great article 1-year ago but no one can see it off the home page. A really good example of this is: http://www.pearsonified.com. Chris presents his blog posts on his sidebar in an attractive manner i.e. must reads, worth a look etc. Also be sure to check out this post: http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/11/wicked-wordpress-archives-in-one-easy-step.php

Posted by Phil on 2007/01/24

Awesome Phil! I love the use of design and colour to further entice the readers into Chris's chosen favourite posts. I think after the "top posts" have been chosen by whatever means the blogger chooses, the next step is to make sure they are seen. And yes, blog titles which create interest and are visually hard to miss, made me want to look further. If the content can be as good as the titles...you have hit the sweet spot!

Posted by Smallz on 2007/01/24

Yeah Phil that really is a good example of presenting posts differently. Definately a blog we can learn from!

Posted by Rob on 2007/01/27