Displaying latest and most popular blog posts in your WordPress footer

Fat footers are very handy for displaying additional information on your site. On a previous version of this website I used to display the latest blog posts, while on this newer version I opted to display the popular posts. I thought I would share these code snippets here.

Display Recent Blog Post

In your footer.php file, simply use the following code:

<ul>
<? query_posts('showposts=10');?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>

Simply change ‘showposts=10′ to whatever number you want to display more or less than 10 posts.

Display Most Popular Blog Posts

“Most popular” posts in this case is defined by the posts that have the most comments. In order to select these, the following pieces need to be used:

1. Add the following function to your function file:

function most_popular_posts($no_posts = 10, $before = '<li>', $after = '</li>', $show_pass_post = false, $duration='') {
global $wpdb;
$request = "SELECT ID, post_title, COUNT($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID) AS 'comment_count' FROM $wpdb->posts, $wpdb->comments";
$request .= " WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND $wpdb->posts.ID=$wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID AND post_status = 'publish'";
if(!$show_pass_post) $request .= " AND post_password =''";
if($duration !="") { $request .= " AND DATE_SUB(CURDATE(),INTERVAL ".$duration." DAY) < post_date ";
}
$request .= " GROUP BY $wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT $no_posts";
$posts = $wpdb->get_results($request);
$output = '';
if ($posts) {
foreach ($posts as $post) {
$post_title = stripslashes($post->post_title);
$comment_count = $post->comment_count;
$permalink = get_permalink($post->ID);
$output .= $before . '&raquo; <a href="' . $permalink . '" title="' . $post_title.'">' . $post_title . '</a>' . $after;
}
} else {
$output .= $before . "None found" . $after;
}
echo $output;

In this function, I’ve set the number of posts to 10 – ‘$no_posts = 10‘. Just change this number to display more or less posts.

2. Insert the following in your footer.php

<ul>
<?php most_popular_posts(); ?>
</ul>