Blogging Tips: Popular Posts

Learn how to add a popular posts gadget or widget to your WordPress or Blogger website to show readers more posts they can read.

Do you show your recent posts or links to your past posts in your sidebar? No? Well, you are missing out on an opportunity.

Consider this scenario:

I see your tweet or facebook status about your new post with a link to it.

I click through and read it – and love it, of course!

So I want to read some more posts you’ve written.

I look in the sidebar but there aren’t any links there.

Oh well, another day perhaps… and off I click…

……Oops! Reader gone!

If you had a little list there of Recent Posts or Top Posts or even Categories or Tags, I could explore some more.

How to add a Recent Posts widget to your Sidebar

WordPress:

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard
2. If you have Jetpack installed, you should find widgets for Recent Posts, Categories and Tags in the list in the middle section of the screen.
3. Click, drag and drop the one you want into your Sidebar area.
4. You can then edit the options, like the title and how many posts you want to show up.
5. Click save and you’re done.
6. You can find similar widgets in there for Categories and Tags,and you can add them by following the same steps. I use the WordPress.com Popular Posts widget, which you can find here or search within your dashboard where you add new plugins. It is a separate plugin to download that integrates with the Jetpack stats.  Once you download and activate it, you will see it in the list of widgets to drag across.

Blogger:

1. Go to the Layout screen in your Dashboard.
2. At the top of your Sidebar, click on “Add a Gadget”
3. There is a Popular Post Gadget in the Basics list in the window that pops up.
4. Click the + sign to add it. Choose the options you want and Save.
5. You can drag and drop it to where you want it in your Sidebar list, then Save (at the top)
6. To show Recent Posts in Blogger, add the Archives gadget. You can rename it “Recent Posts” if you like.