I have many Wordpress plugins that I use on this blog and others.  I just wanted to post quickly about the popularity contest plugin at AlexKing.org.  The plugin is simple and puts a popularity value to all of your posts based on values of importance that you select.

You are allowed to put a number with the importance of certain attributes of a post.  If you think a post is more popular because of comments, you can set that number high and the posts with more comments will show to be more popular than posts that have fewer comments.  Maybe you think that the more permalink views your post gets, the more popular it should be.  You can set it up that way as well.

In my opinion I think the more comments a post has the more popular it is.  So I set that number a bit higher.  Permalinks and trackbacks are second on my list.  That is really all I care about and when I see the list of popular items for the month, the posts look fine to me.

I think the plugin is a good way to go if you want to showcase the posts that get more attention than others.  This will allow your readers further access deeper into your blog.