Popular Authors Template Tags

Popular Authors ships four PHP functions you can call from a theme, child theme, or plugin to display or fetch author data. All functions live in the global namespace and require Top 10 to be active.

wzpa_list_popular_authors()

Render or return the popular authors list.

<?php wzpa_list_popular_authors( array(
    'number'        => 10,
    'optioncount'   => true,
    'show_avatar'   => true,
    'show_fullname' => false,
    'echo'          => true,
) ); ?>

Parameters: $args (array, optional) — accepts the full set of arguments listed under Display arguments below. The default echo argument is true, which prints the output. Pass 'echo' => false to receive the HTML as a string.

Returns: void|string — void when echo is true, the HTML string when echo is false.

wzpa_get_popular_author_ids()

Fetch the raw list of popular author IDs and visit counts without rendering any markup.

<?php
$authors = wzpa_get_popular_author_ids( array(
    'number' => 5,
    'daily'  => true,
) );

foreach ( $authors as $author ) {
    echo absint( $author->author_id ) . ': ' . absint( $author->visits ) . "n";
}
?>

Parameters: $args (array, optional) — see Query arguments below.

Returns: object — array of rows with author_id and visits properties.

wzpa_display_top_posts_by_author()

Render or return the most popular posts for a specific author. Backed by Top 10‘s tptn_pop_posts().

<?php
echo wzpa_display_top_posts_by_author(
    42,             // Author ID.
    'id',           // Field: id | slug | email | login.
    array(
        'posts_per_page' => 5,
    ),
    true            // Echo? Pass false to return the HTML string.
);
?>

Parameters:

• $author (int|string, required) — value to look up the author by. With $field = 'id', pass a numeric user ID.
• $field (string, optional) — field to look up the author by. Accepts id, slug, email, or login. Default id.
• $args (array, optional) — display arguments passed to tptn_pop_posts().
• $echo_value (bool, optional) — whether to print the output. Default true.

Returns: string|void — HTML string when $echo_value is false, void otherwise.

wzpa_list_popular_authors_args()

Return the merged defaults for the popular authors display. Useful when you want to read the configured defaults without re-implementing the merge logic yourself.

<?php
$defaults = wzpa_list_popular_authors_args();
?>

Parameters: $args (array, optional) — overrides applied on top of the defaults.

Returns: array — full list of display arguments with undefined values filled in.

Display arguments

These arguments are accepted by wzpa_list_popular_authors()Opens in a new window and wzpa_list_popular_authors_args(). The same key set is exposed by the shortcode and the block.

Query arguments

These arguments are accepted by wzpa_get_popular_author_ids()Opens in a new window and map directly to the database query that aggregates visits from Top 10’s tables.

See also

• wzpa_list_popular_authorsOpens in a new window
• wzpa_get_popular_author_idsOpens in a new window