WP-PostViews counts how many times each post, page or custom post type has been read and gives you somewhere to show the number. The count is kept as post meta, so it sorts, queries and exports like anything else WordPress stores about a post.

Features

A view count on any post, page or custom post type, printed by a template tag or by the [views] shortcode.
Two templates you edit yourself, with tokens for the count, the title, the date, the excerpt, the thumbnail, the author and more.
Choose who is counted — everyone, guests only or logged in users only — and leave known robots out.
Template tags and a widget for the most and least viewed posts, optionally within a category or a tag.
A sortable Views column on the post and page list tables.
The count on the REST API as a views field, and an AJAX counting path for sites behind a page cache.
A section on the WP-Stats page when that plugin is installed.

Donations

I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations.

Usage

The simplest way, and the only one that works in a block theme without editing template files, is the shortcode. Put it in the post or page whose count you want shown:

[views] shows the count for the post it appears in.
[views id="1"] shows the count for post 1, wherever you put it.

To show the count on every post automatically, a classic theme calls the template tag from index.php, archive.php, single.php or page.php, anywhere inside the loop:

<?php if ( function_exists( 'the_views' ) ) { the_views(); } ?>

The settings live at WP-Admin -> Settings -> WP-PostViews, on two tabs. Settings is where you choose who gets counted and whether WP-Stats is offered a Views section; Templates is where you edit the markup a count is rendered with.

Where the count appears is decided by where your theme calls the_views() or where you put the shortcode. To hide it somewhere in particular, answer the wp_postviews_should_display filter:

add_filter( 'wp_postviews_should_display', function ( $show ) {
    return ! is_archive() && ! is_search();
} );

Showing The View Count In A Block

One block is available in the editor, under Widgets:

Post Views — the view count, rendered with the template from the Templates tab. Leave Post ID at zero to show the count of the post the block is in, which is what an empty [views] does, or set it to another post’s ID to show that post’s count instead.

It renders on the server, so the block preview in the editor is the real number rather than an approximation, and the count keeps rising in every post showing it without anything being re-saved. Previewing the block in the editor does not count a view.

The shortcode still works and is not going anywhere. [views] and [views id="1"] behave exactly as they always have, and a post already containing one needs no change. The block calls the same code the shortcode calls, so the two render identically — use whichever suits the post.

WP-CLI

wp postviews list
wp postviews list --limit=50 --format=json
wp postviews get 42

The command reads and never writes. No screen in this plugin edits a view count, so the command does not offer one either — wp post meta update <id> views <n> is still there for whoever genuinely needs it, and says plainly that it is reaching past the plugin.

REST API

POST /wp-json/postviews/v1/post/<id>/view

Reading a count needs no route of its own. The count is already published as a read-only views field on the core post resource, so /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/<id> answers with the post and its count together, and a list of posts carries every count in one response.

What the core field cannot do is write, which is what this route is for: it counts a view, and it exists for sites serving cached pages, where the view has to be reported after the page is delivered. It takes the same wp_postviews_nonce the counting script is given, as a nonce parameter.

It is refused unless the site defers counting — that is, unless it has a page cache and has turned the AJAX counting path on. Otherwise the view has already been counted while the page rendered, and counting again here would record every view twice.

A refusal answers 403 — a bad nonce, or a site that counts views while the page renders. A post that does not exist is 404.

This route is an addition. The admin-ajax.php wp_postviews action is unchanged and still supported.