Random post script
Is there code somewhere out there to jump to a random post? I think it would be great for encouraging inter-blog browsing by visitors to offer this button/link/etc. I have the post indexer plugin running.
Thanks!
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Hiya!
Probably the easiest way to do this would be to use our Recent Global Posts widget here:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/recent-global-posts-widget
You could set the number of posts to 1 in the widget settings.
To get it to display a random post you'd need to edit widget-recent-global-posts.php. You could edit line 158 from
"site_posts ORDER BY post_published_stamp DESC LIMIT "
to
"site_posts ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT "
Doing that, the widget will display one random post from the site_posts database.
Hope this helps! :D
Keeper of the Dark Chocolate
Also depends on how you're planning on presenting this random post. Are we just talking about a static link that drops you into a random post, a display of the_excerpt of a random post like along the sidebar, or (ah heck, I forget the third type.)
If you search the wp.org /extend/plugins database for random, you should see a couple of different plugins that do random posts in different manners.
I;d give some links but I'm stuck on a library computer with no copy/paste and only a single browser pane.
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That's a really cool idea about modifying the random post widget. I hadn't thought about including that in our blogger's child theme.
For the question of the intended implementation, I had imagined on our front page putting a link that literally said "Random post >>" as an alternative to click instead of "All blogs >>" (I think the missing piece for drmike was this was network-wide, not blog wide). As such, I don't think the older WP plugins will work since it would need to pull from the post indexer table.
Essentially, the code would need to pick a random post from the table and return it as the url.
@teachforus,
Heh, simple solutions are where it's at!
To get the output as a link to a blog rather than an actual post itself, you could further modify the widget. Or write a custom query tapping into the Post Indexer plugin. (That's probably the solution you're interested in).
I'm not specifically a developer, but I took a crack at this and was able to customize (read: possibly ruin forever) Andrew's code from the Widget plugin and create a "Random Post" link. I inserted the following code into the loop.php file for twenty-ten.
Your mileage most definitely will vary and someone is welcome to come along and say "hah. try this instead." but hey - It's a start!
<?php $query = "SELECT * FROM " . $wpdb->base_prefix . "site_posts
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1 ";
$posts = $wpdb->get_results( $query, ARRAY_A );
if (count($posts) > 0){
foreach ($posts as $post){
echo ' <a href="' . $post['post_permalink'] . '">' .
__('Random Post') . '</a>';
}
} ?>Thanks and good luck!
*Edit* Ugh, the code formatting is giving me grief. If you have trouble copy/pasting this, let me know and I'll try to get this done line-by-line.
Or better yet, I'll just upload the code in a txt file here.
Thanks!
Cool. I'll check this out over the weekend.
