It is very easy to display popular posts in wordpress, we can use WordPress Popular Posts plugin. Here is the tutorial:
Display WordPress Popular Posts with WordPress Popular Posts – WordPress Plugin
However, this plugin can not allow us to display popular posts by category ids dynamically. For example, if you are reading a post in python category, you want to display popular posts in python category. Meanwhile, you are reading a tutorial in tensorflow, you should list popular posts in tensorflow category.
Dispay popular post by category id statically
WordPress Popular Posts plugin can not implement the function above, it only can allow us to display popular posts in a static category.
You can set the category ids in wordpress Widgets page.
How to dispay popular post by category ids dynamically
In order to make WordPress Popular Posts plugin display popular posts by category ids dynamically, we should modify this plugin.
1.Open wordpress-popular-posts\includes\class-wordpress-popular-posts-widget.php file
Then we can modify it.
2. Add code below in public function get_popular( $instance = null )
$cats = '';
if(is_single()){
$categories = get_the_category();
if (!empty( $categories ) ) {
foreach( $categories as $category ){
if($cats==""){
$cats.=$category->term_id;
}else{
$cats.=",".$category->term_id;
}
}
if (!empty($options['term_id']) ){
$instance['term_id'] = $cats;
}else{
$instance['term_id'] .= ",".$cats;
}
}
}
if(is_category()){
$cat = get_category(get_query_var('cat'));
if (!empty($options['term_id']) ){
$instance['term_id'] = $cat->term_id;
}else{
$instance['term_id'] .= ",".$cat->term_id;
}
}Save it.
Then you will find this plugin can display popular posts by category ids in single and category page.
Here is the effect of this plugin.
Single page
Category page
