WPP not displaying correct stories

Hi @ralinke,

Could you please share screenshots of the settings you’re using with the plugin? Also, go to Settings > WordPress Popular Posts, click on the Debug link at the top center of your screen and share the info shown there here.

Hi @hcabrera, thanks for the quick response! Here is the debug screen?

And here is the relevant part of the parameters we are using for our posts!

<div class=”wpp-shortcode”><script type=”application/json”>{“title”:”Trending tips”,”limit”:”3″,”offset”:0,”range”:”last24hours”,”time_quantity”:24,”time_unit”:”hour”,”freshness”:false,”order_by”:”views”

"limit":"3","offset":0,"range":"last24hours","time_quantity":24,"time_unit":"hour","freshness":false,"order_by":"views"

• This reply was modified 7 months, 2 weeks ago by ralinke.
• This reply was modified 7 months, 2 weeks ago by ralinke.

Hm, sorry, it appears the screenshot didn’t work. Trying to just copy and paste the content on that screen.

Plugin Configuration
Performance Nag: Dismissed

Log Limit: No

Log Views From: Everyone

Data Caching: Yes, 1 minute

Data Sampling: No

External object cache: Yes

WPP_CACHE_VIEWS: No


System Info
PHP version: 8.2.21

PHP extensions: Core, date, libxml, openssl, pcre, zlib, filter, hash, json, random, Reflection, SPL, session, standard, sodium, cgi-fcgi, mysqlnd, PDO, xml, apcu, bcmath, bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, dba, dom, enchant, mbstring, FFI, fileinfo, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, i360, iconv, igbinary, imagick, imap, intl, exif, mongodb, msgpack, mysqli, odbc, pdo_dblib, PDO_Firebird, pdo_mysql, PDO_ODBC, pdo_pgsql, pdo_sqlite, pgsql, Phar, posix, readline, redis, shmop, SimpleXML, soap, sockets, sqlite3, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tidy, tokenizer, xmlreader, xmlrpc, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, memcached, Zend OPcache

Database version: 10.5.25-MariaDB-deb11-log

InnoDB availability: DEFAULT

WordPress version: 6.4.3

Multisite: No

Active plugins: 404page - your smart custom 404 error page 11.3.0, Ad Inserter 2.7.33, Advanced iFrame Pro 2020.6, All in One SEO 4.3.9, AndroidIntel Interactive Quiz System 1.0.0, Classic Editor 1.6.2, Code Snippets 3.6.2, ConvertKit for Gravity Forms 1.3.6, Gravity Forms 2.7.8, Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA Add-On 1.1, Gravity Forms Zapier Add-On 4.1, Header and Footer Scripts 2.2.1, Leira Letter Avatar 1.3.7, Manage Notification E-mails 1.8.2, Memberful WP 1.71.3, Object Cache Pro 1.20.2, One User Avatar 2.4.0, Page Links To 3.3.6, PDF Embedder Premium Secure 5.1.4, Plugin Organizer 10.1.9, podcast player 6.4.3, Poll Maker 8.4.3, Popup Maker 1.18.1, Posts in Sidebar 4.15.1, Public Post Preview 2.10.0, PublishPress Revisions 3.5.6, Search & Filter Pro 2.5.17, Shortcoder 5.6, SVG Support 2.5.5, TheIntelligence Customizations 1.1.3, Ultimate Addons for WPBakery Page Builder 3.19.14, UpSolution Core 7.10, Wordfence Login Security 1.1.7, WordPress Popular Posts 6.4.2, WP Add Custom CSS 1.1.6, WPBakery Page Builder 6.6.0, WP Links 5.29, WP Mail SMTP 2.9.0, WP Rocket 3.13.4, WP Rollback 2.0.7, Yoast Duplicate Post 4.1.2

Theme: TheIntelligence Child Theme (1.1.0) by TheIntelligence

Thanks!

Well, at first glance nothing seems out of place.

When you say that the data doesn’t match vs what you’re seeing on the Stats screen, what are actually seeing on the Stats screen?

P.S.: To insert images here use the Image block. You’ll need to upload the image somewhere first though but it’ll do the job.

P.S.S.: Also, please use the Code block when pasting code here so its formatting is preserved, otherwise the forum will most likely mangle it.

Hey! On the Stats screen, I am seeing different articles as our top three stories in the last 24 hours from what is showing up on the page.

The first story is actually the same, but the second and third are different. According to the Stats screen, the stories that are showing up as second and third on the page are actually the 4th and 9th in terms of traffic.

And you’re using the same post type (default is post for the shortcode) on the Stats screen? (You can see this by clicking on the Cog icon at the top left of the Stats screen.)

Yep, as far as I can tell! In the parameters, it says:

"post_type":"post",

And when I look at the post type on the Stats screen, it also shows post.

Ah, there is one thing that can make a difference.

Currently, Data Caching is enabled on your site. Depending on your site’s traffic -and the documentation also points this out- there’s a possibility for the data shown on the Stats screen to be different from what you see on the front-end:

Are there any disadvantages to having this option enabled?

Just one: whenever someone visits any of your posts and/or pages your popular posts list won’t be updated right away. For example, if you set the plugin to cache the data for one week then your popular posts list won’t be updated for a week.

The plugin will use the cached data to build and display your popular posts list. Once the cached data expires WPP will query the database again to retrieve the updated popular posts data, refresh the data cache and build the new popular posts list.

Think of this as a trade-off: the plugin will use less resources at the expense of not displaying a live popular posts list.

Does this affect the Stats dashboard?

No, the Stats dashboard will always show live statistics. The caching feature only affects every instance of WPP on the public side of your website (the WPP widget, the wpp_get_mostpopular() template tag, the [wpp] shortcode), and/or the various REST API endpoints registered by the plugin.

Just checked on my site and was able to see the same thing: my 24h list shows posts ranked differently -but not by that much- vs my popular posts list on the front-end. Then I remembered that Data Caching is enabled on my site, so I disabled it and:

Everything matches as expected.

The one other thing I found strange in your case is that you seem to be using HTML code instead of an actual shortcode. Why is that? Why not use an actual shortcode like the one below?

[wpp title='Trending tips' range='last24hours' limit=3]

Aside from that I don’t have any other ideas/suggestions to make.

Thanks for the suggestions, @hcabrera! Data caching was enabled, but it was set to refresh the cache every minute, so it didn’t seem like that would necessarily affect it. I tried disabling it, though, and see if that makes a difference. It hasn’t changed anything yet, but we are hopeful that it will.

Hi @hcabrera, just following up on this! As of this morning, popular posts is still showing the same three stories as yesterday, not updated based on the most views stories are getting on our site. Is there anything else that you can think of that could be affecting this? Thanks, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Hey @ralinke,

Unfortunately no, I already shared all of the ideas / suggestions I could think of.

At this point I think access to the site would be required for further debugging and so it might be a good idea to reach out to a developer and have them look into this for you.