cherry-trending-posts

Oct/2018: If you use apache mod_security with CRS rules, it will trigger rule 933180. REQUEST-933-APPLICATION-ATTACK-PHP id 933180 PHP Injection Attack: Variable Function Call Found Matched Data: $s (%2$s. Average %3$s of %4$s) found within ARGS:trend_format[ftype0]: %1$s (%2$s. Average %3$s of %4$s) severity CRITICAL ver "OWASP_CRS/3.1.0"

According to the plugin documentation, you must manually add two actions to your theme before this plugin will work. They tell you which file to change, IF you use a particular free theme, but you have to decide whether to add it to your theme's index or single or single-post file otherwise. The code shown (that you need to add) on the plugin page is incorrect. I found the correct code on the GitHub site. There's even more code to add if you use a cache. And they didn't mention it, but trust me – you'll need to flush that cache before these results will display. If you're still with me after all that, know that the posts this widget will show (yes, "widget", since I found no shortcode, etc. to allow it's data to be used in a page, etc.) will likely always be the same old posts. Why? Because people want to see what's "trending", so they'll click on a page shown by this widget. Especially if using "views" as the criteria, just the fact of listing the posts will increase the views and perpetuate their display. I found no built-in function to add a date filter, so as to limit to only the most recent posts. I had to manually add that code – something that many users may not wish to or be able to do. With all that said, this plugin serves an important need and seems to have little competition. Hopefully they will keep it updated and make some improvements.