Does this send data to a third-party service?
No. The Hits List stores tracking data locally in your WordPress database and does not call a third-party analytics endpoint.
What can I use to display popular posts?
Use the Popular Posts block, the Popular Posts widget, the [thl_list] shortcode, or template tags in your theme. All of them accept the same options.
Does it include dashboard reporting?
Yes. The WordPress dashboard includes five cards: daily top posts, all-time top posts, views over time with a period-on-period comparison, trending posts, and refresh candidates.
What does trending actually measure?
How fast a post is gaining views compared with its own recent history, rather than how many views it has in total. A most-viewed list tends to show the same evergreen posts every week; trending shows what is moving now.
Posts need a minimum amount of recent activity before they qualify, so a post jumping from one view to a handful will not displace genuinely popular content.
What are refresh candidates?
Posts that once performed well and have since gone quiet. They are compared against their own history rather than against other posts, so a steadily modest post is not mistaken for one that has declined, and recently published posts are excluded.
They are usually the best candidates for an update, and they are easy to overlook because they never appear on a most-viewed list.
Can I export my view counts?
Yes. The settings screen can download both count tables as CSV or JSON.
Can editors see view counts in wp-admin?
Yes. Post list screens can show total, daily, and condensed view-count columns.
Can I migrate from Top 10?
Yes. The plugin can import compatible overall and daily counts from Top 10 tables. Imports are rerun-safe, so repeating the import does not double-count unchanged source data.
How long is daily data kept?
Daily buckets are retained for 180 days by default, and the window is configurable from the settings screen. All-time counts are never removed.
Will it slow my site down?
Popular-post output is cached and its database queries are batched, so a list costs roughly the same amount of work whether it shows three posts or thirty. Sites running a persistent object cache benefit further, because the results carry between page loads.
Is this a full analytics suite?
No. The Hits List is focused on local view counts and popular-content display. Use a full analytics platform if you need campaign attribution, visitor funnels, or cross-site reporting.