wow…wanna try it on my localhost..

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I’m still using Wasabi’s one (now unreachable) simple and straight like yours.

Dominiziano, yeah I am aware of Wasabi’s plugin… but it has been unreachable for a while.

Hello, on my WP 2.1.3 the plugin, once activated, doesn’t appear in the Presentation/Sidebar Widgets tab. Any suggestions?

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@Editor: Are you sure it didn’t? Weird. I have tested it again and again on multiple blogs.

Unfortunately, I am. After activating the plugin, in the Presentation/Sidebar tab of my site the Random Post widget simply doesn’t appear.

[...] Random Posts Widget es un widget para la barra lateral que despliega aleatoriamente una entrada sin importar la categoría. [...]

[...] Random Posts widget, Display Random Posts Widget. Based on Random categories with random posts by Mike Stickel. By Ady Romantika. [...]

[...] Random Posts Widget es un widget para la barra lateral que despliega aleatoriamente una entrada sin importar la categoría. [...]

Well, unfortunally it is true, i do not see it as widget when i try to post..maybe i am doing something wrong i have no clue. Can you give us a screen shot of how it looks the whole page with the randompost widget open?

Thanks

@Astirt: It is not a widget used in posts. It is a widget to display a list of links to your old posts, on your sidebar. You can see the widget in action at the front page of this blog (bottom of column 3). Ctrl-F and search for ‘Random’. In the administration area, it should be available in the Presentation/Sidebar widgets page as a draggable item.

[...] are a bunch of new features for developers too. Looks like I will have to check my simple random posts widget plugin whether it still works in [...]

Thanks!
Worked perfectly, needed exactly 3 minutes to install and configure

Wow, thanks for timing it

Ady,

Good plugin. One bug is that you are also picking up pages. You need to add to the where clause to check for post_type of ‘post’ for WP 2.1+.

Mike

@Mike: Thanks for letting me know. I have fixed the bug and updated to version 1.2

I have the same problem. Where ever I put the widget on my side bar (wordpress 2.1) the rest of my bar just stops loading and it whole page is messed up – Any way to fix this?

Thanks – I’d really love to use this.

Thank you very much for this plugin

To those who are still having problems with this plugin, try the latest version (1.3). And if you still have problems, activate & place the plugin then email me your blog URL (if you don’t want to disclose) so that I can analyze the issue.

[...] Visit [...]

Hi Ady,

thanks for the plugin! Exactly what I’m looking for *but*

With a lot of posts (>1200) the query is too slow to use. The sidebar hangs up during page load while the query executes.

It looks like we’re SELECTing everything in the DB and then shuffling it?

@air: The query is simply utilizing MySQL’s built-in random function:

… ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT $numPosts

Internally I think that is the case, like what you mentioned. I will explore other possibilities to retrieve random records and update.

Here’s a possibility:
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?115,151065,151065

@air: thanks. I was thinking of the same solution but I am just not sure of what effetc does the extra queries have. Will try this on development machine first.

Would it be possible to restrict posts by Category. I have a movie review site and I’d like to only include reviews and not other posts.

@Paul: yes that is a splendid idea! I shall include that in the next update

If I may add another suggestion: I sometimes get the same post listed twice (not often but it happens). Can you prevent that from happening?

[...] URI: http://www.romantika.name/v2/2007/05/02/wordpress-plugin-random-posts-widget/ Description: Display Random Posts Widget. Based on Random categories with random posts by Mike [...]

Yeah, me too. I have also noticed that the same post can show up several times. Not a big problem, though, but still…

Great plugin man! I’ve been looking for something like this for a while!

Cheers!

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Hello all.

I’ve just uploaded version 1.4 of the plugin to the plugin directory. I’ve taken a different turn than the suggestions below as WordPress stores data in a very different way. However I have succeeded to rewrite the algorithm and achieved very good performance. A category can now be selected, and no more duplicates. Do let me know if you have any problems.

Works great. Just what the doctor ordered!

I have successfully uploaded it & put the widget in my sidebar. It appears in my sidebar alright but when I click it, it’s not taking me to the right post. Any ideas why?

Thanks!

Oh No! Version 1.4.1 contained a bug where a wrong permalink is displayed. Thanks to Melanie for noticing this. I have fixed it and uploaded as version 1.4.2. Grab it once updated on the WordPress plugin directory.

WOW! It’s working like a champ now!
BIG BIG THANKS Ady!
I used to have Way Back widget in there & I replaced it with this one. It’s better I think! Much much better!
Great Job!

I see you have fixed the duplicate posts bug… great! Will upgrade right now

Oops… it messed up my sidebar widgets plugin (I am not using the newest WP version) Guess it’s time to upgrade

Excellent job, no issues so far. Thank you!

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This sounds good, but the one thing I cannot find anywhere is an example of this in action. When I click on what’s supposed to be an examples, I get to see the actual code for this widget, not the end result. I can’t view a working example of the collapsible archive widget either… I looked and looked on the main page, where it’s supposed to be, but I must be missing it?

@Wendy: You missed them. They are all in the front page. The random posts are titled “Random Posts” while the archives are labelled “Archives”. They are both at the bottom of the 3rd column, just before the “Recommended Products” (Amazon). Can you find them?

Thanks, ady, yeah, I’m a goober… I see it… NOW. The archives feature didn’t look how I expected it to — though yeah, it does what I was looking for. I didn’t see the Random at all. Maybe my brain was having a hiccup.

BTW, for kicks, here’s the WordPress project I’m working on at the moment: http://www.inception-magazine.com/zine/ . I did my first WP project last month, http://www.stormconstantine.com and was so thrilled with how it turned out I switched hosts on the zine site just so I could redo it (in all its static HTML, CSS-less horror) on another host with WP and PHP.

Ah no Wendy, you are just in a new place and it’s hard to see anyway

That is some nice artwork you have there. Keep up the good work.

[...] Random Posts: Bu widget sidebar’ınızda istediğiniz sayıda rastgele yazıyı listeleyebiliyor. Sitelerdeki “Okudunuz mu?” bölümlerini hazırlamak için düşünülmüş. Ayrıntılı bilgi eklenti sayfasında. [...]

[...] Random Posts widget [...]

Cool plugin! But I dont have this fancy widget stuff cant I just use a simple php tag?

el johnny: I don’t think it’ll work but you can try uploading the plugin and activating it. It can be called with < ?php echo ara_random_posts($before_title,$after_title); ?>. Change the two variables to whatever your plugin uses for the titles. However one problem I foresee is the ability to set options as this is controlled by register_widget_control. Try it out and let me know. Just out of curiosity, what version are you using? Newer versions should have widgets built-in.

Thanks for your reply ady. Im using wordpress 2.2.3 but with my own very very basic template. Im using wasabi now.

Hello! I had your plugin installed, but when I upgraded to 2.3, it stopped working.

Any ideas why this might be the case? Is this a known problem?

Hi Evan – yes this is expected because of changes in WordPress 2.3. I am looking into the matter now.

Evan – amazingly I don’t have any error on my newly upgraded WordPress 2.3 on my development server.

I need to know the exact errors you see, please.

Here’s the content of the error, all appearing on my front page. “From the vault” is my title for the Random Posts Widget, and the error appears above it.

WordPress database error: [Table 'evan_wrdp1.wp_post2cat' doesn't exist]
SELECT wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts, wp_post2cat WHERE wp_posts.post_status = ‘publish’ AND wp_posts.post_type = ‘post’AND wp_post2cat.post_id = wp_posts.ID AND wp_post2cat.category_id = 9

Warning: array_rand() [function.array-rand]: Second argument has to be between 1 and the number of elements in the array in /home/evan/public_html/wp-content/plugins/randomposts.php on line 87

WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ')' at line 1]
SELECT wp_posts.post_title, wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts WHERE)
From the Vault

Evan: I’ve updated the plugin to version 1.5.0 and tested it here on WP 2.3: http://homedev.romantika.name/wp-2.3/ and here on 2.2.2: http://homedev.romantika.name/randomposts/

Please download it and let me know if you still encounter issues

Everything works awesomely now! Thank you so much!

I’m looking for a way to show 2 widgets on my site with 2 different categories. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks for the very helpful plugin!

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Is it possible to install this on a non-Wordpress site but linking to a WordPress Blog. In other words, I want to display random posts of my blog on a completely different site that is not a blog and does not have WordPress installed.

[...] Auswahl eines zufälligen Beitrages Random Posts Widget [...]

[...] Random Posts widget [...]

[...] Plugin Homepage [...]

[...] Random Posts widget [...]

[...] Random Posts widget Display Random Posts Widget. Based on Random categories with random posts by Mike Stickel. By Ady Romantika. [...]

[...] 4. Random Posts widget [...]

[...] Random Posts Widget displays a number of links to random posts on your blog. I use to have a “Best posts” heading, but maintaining it was too much of a hassle, so I removed it and simply went for the random links. The ability to browse through a blog randomly rather than having to go chronologically or by category is great, and by giving a choice of posts for someone to click on, they can pick the one that most interests them. If you haven’t tried out the random links yet, do have a go. Most of the traffic on this blog is on recent posts, but the older posts don’t have any less quality. [...]

Hi there.
I was wondering on if there could be an option for an excerpt (Y/N) with a selectable X number of words. The excerpt would be in plain text. I could be nice for those with little on their sidebar. Thanx for a great plugin

[...] Random Posts Widget [...]

[...] Random Post Widget: Zeigt eine zufällige Anzahl an Beiträgen in der Sidebar an. Gut für neue Besucher, da sie so auch auf ältere Beiträge hingewiesen werden. [...]

Works flawlessly on my site! Superb plugin!

[...] Random posts widgetThrows up a set of random posts on the sidebar. Good options available. [...]

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hai ady..thanks for this plugin..i tested in my WP2.5..look great and working fine..

First off, GREAT plugin!

Would it be possible to put this in the body of my blog? Actually insert it in the HTML? I’d love to able to put this at the bottom of my posts. Is there any way I can do this?

can this be used on wordpress 2.5? if not can you make a version for it? thankss

Yep. It works on 2.5.

There are a lot of plans for this plugin but it has to wait for a while due to other commitments.

my goodness… i’ve been looking for this type of plugin throughout the whole worldwideweb – and i found this post from google. you didnt tell me you have this plugin.

thanks a bunch ady

Well, sometimes the thing are you looking for is under your own nose and you just don’t realize it

Enjoy… you’re lucky you can ask for face to face support for this plugin if you have difficulties LOL.

Hmmm… I must find time to enhance this plugin. It’s long overdue.

[...] Ebenfalls zufällig dargestellt werden nun bis zu fünf Beiträge meines Blogs mit dem Random Posts Widget. Den Meta-Bereich werde ich evtl. auch noch einmal woanders unterbringen. Das meiste davon ist [...]

Thanks for this plugin.

FYI, I used “php echo ara_random_posts($before_title,$after_title); ” with WordPress 2.6.2 and it seems to work fine.

I’ll let you know if I have to face issues.

[...] For more information or to donate to the Plugin author visit the plugin hompage [...]

excellent plugin! fantastic work…

one quick question, ady–how difficult is it to increase the number of results to 15 instead of 10 max?

i tried nosing around the code but i’m no programmer i’m afraid.

thanks!

ken

thanks a lot!

[...] Random Posts – добавляет виджет в котором показываются ссылки на случайные записи вашего блога. [...]

Nice work.. !
Just a newbie around, so I just want to ask a simple thing: how can I enable widget on my WP blogs ?

Thanks.

Hi, i installed your plugin but as i’m using jLanguage to make posts in english and spanish your plugin show the post titles as [english]Title[/english][spanish]Titulo[/spanish].

That is the syntax jLanguage uses to know which language to show but the default Recent Posts widget of WordPress show the titles correctly.

Is there anything you or i can do to solve this? Many thanks.

Regards.

Abiyanto, you’re using WordPress 2.0.2 so you need to install a plugin. Widgets are included by default in 2.2 or later.

If you decide to stay with your current version you can download the plugin here: http://automattic.com/code/widgets/

This plug-in works with WordPress 2.7.1 ! Simple and smart !
Thanks, that’s great !

This is very user friendly – thank you! I have gone through a number of plugins to try and find one that will also let me include an excerpt. Would it be difficult to include that in this plugin? I can edit it, but I don’t know where.

Thanks so much!

Thank for make this plugin. How to exclude post in display???

Im on wordpress 2.8.6 and your widget has destroyed my blog

I get this code when i try to acess any part of it, including admin

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare widget_ara_randomposts() (previously declared in /websites/123reg/LinuxPackage21/mi/sc/mu/miscmusic.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/random-posts-widget/randomposts.php:198) in /websites/123reg/LinuxPackage21/mi/sc/mu/miscmusic.net/public_html/wp-content/plugins/random-posts-widget/randomposts.php on line 198

Please get back to me

Thanks

Delete the plugin file randomposts.php (or the whole folder). As mentioned in http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/random-posts-widget/ this plugin has only been tested up to 2.3 (although it worked up to 2.7). After you delete you should be back to normal and be able to access your site normally.

I have intentions to update this plugin but still struggling to find time. WP 2.9 has a lot of changes as well, and this plugin definitely needs to be updated as it will be broken.

Thanks for reporting the issue.

Hi. This might sound odd- but i’ve uploaded it and activated it and it is nowhere to be seen when i then view plugins or widgets. Hmmm. I’ve then tried to upload again and there is an error saying that it already exists.

Any ideas? I’m using WP 2.9.

This is a great plugin. I’ve had it on my site for many months. I set it and forget it.

But I’m with reader ken, above, who would like to increase the number of displayed posts to more than 10.

I’m willing to dig into the style sheet and make changes.

Thanks.

Hello!

This plugin is very nice. But I´m going mad trying to find a plugin or code to randomize post within a specified tag or category..
For exemple,

I have 3 posts: Number 1, Number 2, Number 3 under “Lucky Numbers´category”

And a link somewhere: “whats your lucky number today” – so when clicked, the random code is able to retrieve a post within “Lucky Numbers´category” only.

It could be very usefull if able to retrive posts within Tags, for a more specific content control.

If someone else know some plugins or wp/code for this, please let me know!

Hi.. I loved this widget. Thanks a million. Just one question. Can I make it NOT link up to the original article?

I just want the widget to show up the posts and thats it.
Please let me know.

Thanks again

Thanks for this plugin !

@Diana….and to all others it may concern (and of course Ady)

I was also looking for a plugin that could display some random posts from a specific category, as to me this is great for more dynamic sidebar content and CMS based sites. So after looking around a bit I found this handy little plugin, and another one called Get-a-Post.

Still not quite what I needed so I’ve adapted Ady’s code in a way that allows it’s output to be plugged straight in to the get-a-post plugin! Used in a suitable code loop and voi-la, multiple random posts wherever you need them – although familiarity with PHP is needed so this is most useful to template designers and coders.

I haven’t ‘published’ it yet as much of the code is Ady’s, and with it’s dependence on the Get-a-Post plugin I felt I should inform both authors first.

Also this would be my first plugin so I don’t really know what to do in terms of making it available to others, however as long as both respective authors are happy then I’ll see what I can do…

Thanks

I’d like to thank you, a great plugin to show a random post.