Actually, I found a way to implement my second suggestion (see this pic). So I have this loop on my frontpage and it will pull the 3 most liked custom posts:
$heroes_query = new WP_Query(
array(
'posts_per_page' => 3,
'post_type' => 'heroes',
'meta_key' => 'pld_like_count',
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'DESC'
)
);
And in case you guys want to pull only the count as I have in my image, include this inside the loop:
<?php
global $post;
$post_id = $post->ID;
$like_count = get_post_meta($post_id, 'pld_like_count', true);
?>
And the numbers where you want to show them:
Likes: <?php echo esc_html($like_count); ?>
