WordPress post views count — without plugins

I will be sharing a cookie version shortly as an alternative.

Post view counter code

Copy and paste the snippet below into your functions.php file of your child theme (preferred).

<?php
/**
 * Post view counter function
 */

// Debugging line to check if the file is being included
error_log('post-view-count.php file is included');

// Define the default start count, must be minimum 1
$default_start_count = 1;

function set_post_views($postID) {
    global $default_start_count;

    $count_key = 'post_views_count';
    $count = get_post_meta($postID, $count_key, true);
    if ($count === '' || $count === '0' || $count === 0) {
        $count = $default_start_count;
        update_post_meta($postID, $count_key, $count);
    } else {
        $count++;
        update_post_meta($postID, $count_key, $count);
    }
    error_log("Updated post views for post ID: $postID, New count: $count"); // Debugging line
}

// Prevent prefetching to keep the count accurate.
remove_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link_wp_head', 10, 0);

function track_post_views($post_id) {
    if (!is_single()) {
        return;
    }

    if (empty($post_id)) {
        global $post;
        $post_id = $post->ID;
    }

    $user_ip = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
    $user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

    // List of known bot user agents
    $bot_agents = ['bot', 'crawl', 'slurp', 'spider', 'mediapartners', 'Googlebot', 'Bingbot', 'Yahoo! Slurp', 'DuckDuckBot', 'Baiduspider', 'YandexBot', 'Sogou'];

    // Check if user agent is a bot
    foreach ($bot_agents as $bot_agent) {
        if (stripos($user_agent, $bot_agent) !== false) {
            error_log('Bot detected, skipping view count update'); // Debugging line
            return; // Exit the function if a bot is detected
        }
    }

    // Hash the IP address and user agent for privacy
    $unique_view_key = 'unique_viewed_' . md5($user_ip . $user_agent);

    // Check if the post has already been viewed by the user
    if (!get_post_meta($post_id, $unique_view_key, true)) {
        set_post_views($post_id);

        // Store the unique view information in the post meta
        update_post_meta($post_id, $unique_view_key, '1');
        error_log("Unique view recorded for post ID: $post_id, User key: $unique_view_key"); // Debugging line
    }
}
add_action('wp_head', 'track_post_views', 10); // Adjusted priority

function get_post_views($postID) {
    global $default_start_count;

    $count_key = 'post_views_count';
    $count = intval(get_post_meta($postID, $count_key, true));
    if ($count === 0) {
        $count = $default_start_count;
        update_post_meta($postID, $count_key, $count);
    }
    error_log("Retrieved post views for post ID: $postID, Count: $count"); // Debugging line
    return $count . ' views';
}
?>

To output the count, simply drop the following snippet into a code-block element inside of your single post template or repeater/query loop:

<span class="post-views"><?php echo get_post_views(get_the_ID()); ?></span>

Clear the post view counter

Replace the snippet above with the snippet below in your functions.php file. Press save twice, and then you can clear this snippet and re-save.

<?php
/**
 * Clear post view counter meta data
 */

function delete_all_post_views_meta() {
    global $wpdb;

    // Delete all post views count meta data
    $wpdb->query(
        "DELETE FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key = 'post_views_count'"
    );

    // Optional: Delete all unique view meta data
    $wpdb->query(
        "DELETE FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE meta_key LIKE 'unique_viewed_%'"
    );
}

// Run the cleanup function
delete_all_post_views_meta();
?>

Don’t forget to delete output snippet from your single post template or repeater/query loop!