Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget

This plugin single-handedly destroyed my ability to save any widget (Custom HTML or otherwise) for weeks. Even a simple <p>Hello world</p> in the sidebar triggered the infamous “The response is not a valid JSON response” error. The problem persisted with:

• all other plugins disabled
• default Twenty-Twenty-Five theme
• PHP 8.1
• Cloudflare in Development Mode
• troubleshooting mode active

I chased Cloudflare rules, ModSecurity whitelists, .htaccess fixes, PHP version swaps – literally everything – before discovering that deactivating “Trending/Popular Post Slider and Widget” instantly fixed it.

The plugin is silently injecting output into REST API responses, which completely breaks /wp-json/batch requests used by the block-based Widgets screen and Gutenberg.

This is not a rare edge case; a quick search shows dozens of identical reports going back years, yet the issue is still present in version 1.8.5 (2024).

To the developers: Add if ( defined( ‘REST_REQUEST’ ) && REST_REQUEST ) return; around any output, or move admin logic out of the main file. Until this is fixed, strongly recommend everyone avoid this plugin.

One star because it held my site hostage for weeks. Deactivate it and everything works again.

Total noob atm, so it could be for any reason, but surely as I installed it, my site got bugged.

WP most viewed posts slider / Popular Post Slider

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I was looking for.

Works great with Neve theme i have it running on home page.

It’s so easy to use with Short Codes provided on the getting started page.

I can’t believe others have not found it yet.

I checked 5 others before this with no luck.

Thanx again for this free plugin.

Plugin doesn’t work when you use the classic editor. Probably only when you use the Gutenberg block editor (and I never use that on my websites)

Great slider, you have a big choice of Designs.
And you can easily alter everything with CSS, if you need to finetune it.