All Things Seen and Unseen

Random Posts: WordPress Plugin

October 26th, 2006

Update

13th January, 2007

Random Posts Version 2.0.0 beta is now available. Largely rewritten, it includes some new options and many more possible styles of display. Version 2 now has its own page where future developments will be documented.

Comments are now closed for this post but can be added to the new page.

Version 1.04 just fixes two bugs. The Posts plugin were not working if more than one was installed! Also some users were getting odd characters appearing where they shouldn’t.
Version 1.03 allows some parameters (like ‘before_title’) to be blank, or to be more complex, e.g., 'before_title=<li class="item">. Also allows trimming an excerpt so it ends with a word or a sentence and not in mid-word. NB excerpt_length is now counted in characters and not words as previously.
Version 1.02 fixes a bug with the option to show static pages.
Version 1.01 fixes bugs with default settings when Similar Posts is not also installed.
Adds the skip parameter to ignore a number of posts at the head of the list.

Description

Simply displays a list of posts chosen at random from your blog. Good for getting visitors to explore the depths of your site.

This plugin was designed as a cousin to Similar Posts. It will work fine on its own but if Similar Posts is installed Random Posts will take its settings from the Similar Posts options page.

Instructions

1. Download the latest version of Random Posts.
2. Upload the whole plugin folder (Random_Posts) to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Go to your Admin|Plugins page and activate Random Posts.
4. Put <ul><?php random_posts(); ?></ul> at the place in your WP loop where you want the list of random posts to appear. By default the plugin wraps each post with <li> and </li> but that can be changed.
5. The behaviour of the plugin can be adjusted in two ways. If Similar Posts is installed you can use its options page. Otherwise, a query-style parameter does the trick (see below).

Acknowledgements

Random Posts was inspired by Scott Reilly’s excellent Customizable Post Listings plugin.

Under the Hood

The way the list of random posts is displayed can be set from the Options|Similar Posts page (if it is installed). You can exclude certain categories of post, for example, or change the code that comes before and after the link.

These general options can be overridden in specific cases by passing a query-style parameter, e.g.:

<?php random_posts('limit=10'); ?>

lists 10 random posts

<?php random_posts('none_text=sorry&show_static=false'); ?>

lists the default number of posts, excluding static pages, and specifies what to display if there are none

If you do not specify an option its value is taken from the options page.
This means you can use the template tag in different ways in different places.

The full list of parameters is as follows (with the default value in parentheses):

limit

maximum number of posts to show (5)

skip

how many posts to skip before listing (0)

show_static

include static pages (false)

show_private

include password-protected posts (false)

excluded_cats

comma separated list of categories to exclude (by ID) (9999, the default means none)

excluded_authors

comma separated list of authors to exclude (by ID) (9999, the default means none)

none_text

what to show if no posts match–can be plain text or a permalink

before_title

what to show before a link (<li>)

after_title

what to show after a link(</li>)

trim_before

remove the first instance of ‘before_title’ (false)

show_excerpt

include a snippet of the post after the link (false)

excerpt_length

how long an excerpt should be (50 characters)

excerpt_format

‘char’, the default, does nothing, ‘word’ trims the excerpt to the last full word, and ’sent’ to the full sentence. If the excerpt would be trimmed to nothing no trimming is applied.

ellipsis

add ‘ …’ after the excerpt

before_excerpt

what to show before an excerpt (<li>)

after_excerpt

what to show after an excerpt (</li>)

Feedback

If you try this plugin leave a comment here to let me know how you get on.

Entry Filed under: Programming, WP Plugins

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