Wordpress random post code.

[MKJones]

Tweet

Here is a dead simple bit of code that creates random posts on the frontpage of Wordpress. Instead of installing a whopping big plugin to do the same thing I wrote this instead.

<?php
   if (is_home()) {
      query_posts("showposts=1&cat=18&orderby=rand");
   }
?>

Place the above inside the loop and it will randomly output a post from your choice of category. In the above I have chosen category 18 for my choice of posts. Easily customized: showposts = number of posts and cat= your choice of category. You can alter the is_home to make it work on different pages such as is_page. The above is working on my Wordpress version 2.8.4.

Regards
Mark

[Mogga]

What SEO benefit does that have?

[MKJones]

What SEO benefit does that have?

I never really considered Seo with regard to this. On my own site I have listed all the post titles that belong to the 'Featured' category where the random posts come from so there are links to the content so maybe that helps. I have also added the titles into the meta tags. I suppose random stuff is bad news with regard to Seo. I might have to rethink the random post display but it does make the site seem more interesting in my eyes.