Query posts by popularity?

MANY WAYS depending on what you want ..

I have tried some of the google hits, but it doesnt work for me. I just want to have this query done by #times the post is read, i.e, a honest ranking.
And I DONT’t want to use a plugin, just a query.

so no….
there is no way that i am aware of …
without a plugin or a custom function, I do not know of a way to do so.
As far as I know, wordpress does not keep record of it′s own of the number of times a post is being accessed.
You need to create a table entry for that
But I think you should try to look at THIS THIS THIS and THIS again …

Now I tried to include a plugin, wp-postratings. This one adds 3 custom fields to each post. One of them is suitable to rank the posts. I added this into the beginning of my code (as found in the Codex):

<?php
$querystr = "
    SELECT wposts.*
    FROM $wpdb->posts wposts, $wpdb->postmeta wpostmeta
    WHERE wposts.ID = wpostmeta.post_id
    AND wpostmeta.meta_key = 'ratings_average'
    AND wposts.post_type = 'post'
    ORDER BY wpostmeta.meta_value ASC
    ";

   query_posts('cat=32&showposts=100');

?>

But it doesn’t display the posts as they are ranked (numeric, in the custom field). So… I am a bit closer, BUT…

have you tried to reset the query (if you have a second one)?
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

also :

ORDER BY wpostmeta.meta_value ASC
I do not know the plugin itself, but If the DB field for post.meta is VARCHAR and not INT (or similar) and the key values are up decimal for example, I am not sure it will work.

Thanks for your suggestions!
I have tried both your suggestions, but the ranking itself won’t change. The values in the table is numeric, INT. So I am still quite lost..

LOL – it is always a good idea to read the plugin usage information. Case solved. Case closed. Lesterchan rules.
Oh, by the way, here is the query live:
https://www.winonweb.net/category/featured/