=== Popularity Contest ===

Tags: popular, popularity, feedback, view, comment, trackback, statistics, stats
Contributors: alexking

Popularity Contest keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a 'popularity score' for each post.

The values assigned to each view and feedback type are editable and can be changed at any time. When you change any of these values, the 'popularity score' for all posts are updated immediately to reflect the new values.


== Installation == 

1. Download the plugin archive and expand it (you've likely already done this).
2. Upload the popularity-contest.php file to your wp-content/plugins directory (not in a sub-folder).
3. Go to the Plugins page in your WordPress Administration area and click 'Activate' for Popularity Contest. This will create the database table used by Popularity Contest.
4. Congratulations, you've just installed Popularity Contest and it is now tracking data for you.
5. Optional: go into Options > Popularity to modify the values of each view and feedback type. 

== Known Incompatibilities ==

Since Popularity Contest hooks into the WordPress code that actually displays post content, any caching plugin (like WP-Cache) will affect the ability of Popularity Contest to accurately record views.

== Frequently Asked Questions ==  

= Why are new posts so much more popular than old posts? =  

Since home and feed views have not been recorded for old posts, they won't be ranked as highly as new posts.

= How do I uninstall Populairy Contest? = 

Go back to you Plugins page, and click 'Deactivate' for Popularity Contest.

= What if I want to re-enable Popularity Contest later? = 

No problem. Go back to the Plugins page and click 'Activate' for Popularity Contest. Popularity Contest will check to see if there are new posts and feedback since it was last activated, and will "catch up" as much as possible.

= How do I disable showing 'Popularity: n%' on my posts? = 

For this, you need to edit the Popularity Contest plugin .php file. Just change this:

$ak_show_popularity_with_post = 1;

to this:

$ak_show_popularity_with_post = 0;

= How can I show lists of my most popular posts in my sidebar? =

There are template tage included in Popularity Contest to make it easy for you to show lists of your most popular posts. These tags, along with an explanation of how to use them, can be found on the Popularity Contest options page in your WordPress adming: Options > Popularity.

In addition, I've included a sidebar.php file (from the default template), that has contextual popular posts lists already added. When viewing a category, the included sidebar shows a list of most popular posts in that category. When viewing a month archive, the included sidebar shows a list of most popular posts for that month.

= Anything else? =

That about does it - enjoy!

--Alex King

http://www.alexking.org/software/wordpress/