[M]

An admin page would be handy. That’s why I had said “the ‘hard’ part would be making an admin page.” It is necessary for this in my opinion.

I think with this it would be better to put the post count in the usermeta, rather than the user title. That way for added and deleted posts all you have to do is add or subtract. The most accurate way, however, would probably be to count all the posts and update the meta every time a post is made. If a topic is deleted, a recount would need to be made too. That’s why I liked the “on the fly” method. Fewer errors that way.

Also, regarding query count, I believe it’s still one query per post, but I could be wrong. I guess the difference would be whether you’re pulling the user title from the usermeta or counting the posts on the fly. I’ll mess around with this more this afternoon.

And sorry to irritate, it’s just not that complex IMO. Even your method