Creating a WordPress Plugin which counts the number of views a post receives

In this wordPress Plugin tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a simple WordPress plugin which counts post views. 

The code is split into two parts, the first will track a view using counter() and update_post_meta(). The next method will display the number of views in the post using display_number_of_views()

Here is the full plugin source code.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: An Example Post Views Counter
Plugin URI: https://yourwebsite.com/
Description: A plugin to count the number of views a post receives
Version: 1.0
Author: Codesnippetsandtutorials.com
Author URI: https://yourwebsite.com/
*/

function counter() {
    if (is_single()) {
        global $post;
        $views = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'number_of_views', true);
        if (!$views) {
            add_post_meta( 'post', $post->ID, 'number_of_views', 0, true);
            $views =0;
        }
        $views++;
        update_post_meta($post->ID, 'number_of_views', $views);
    }
}

function display_number_of_views() {
    global $post;
    $views = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'number_of_views', true);
    if (!$views) {
        $views = 0;
    }
    echo '<p>' . $views . ' views</p>';
}

add_action('wp_head', 'counter');
add_action('the_content', 'display_number_of_views');

All done, your posts will now display the number of views each post gets. Make sure you test the code thoroughly before going live with it.