Sillybean

30 Responses to “Random Posts from Category”

1. Adam Kayce says:

   August 6, 2009 at 2:59 pm

   This is an awesome plugin. I’ve been adding my own php code to the sidebar file to make this happen, but that limits the flexibility of where it can display, unless you get into hacking in extra widget areas (blah), and takes a bunch of extra time.

   Your plugin does exactly what I was hoping for, and does it perfectly. 5 stars.

   (by the way, I don’t know if you’ve seen Chris Pearson’s post about this at Pearsonified, but that’s where I got the idea and the code from… I bet his community—the Thesis crowd—would love to know about this plugin.)
   • Stephanie says:

     August 6, 2009 at 3:12 pm

     Thank you so much! I’m glad it was useful.

     I have not seen Chris’s post, but I’m considering using Thesis for a project myself, so that community might well include me by this time next week.
2. Pande says:

   August 9, 2009 at 6:06 pm

   Would be great if the category were dynamical, I mean if I’m in a post show me the category it belongs… if I’m in a search show me the cat. of the first post, etc…
   Regards.
3. Stephan says:

   August 22, 2009 at 6:07 am

   I would also love to be able to use this with pages!
4. Maria says:

   September 3, 2009 at 10:17 am

   I’m looking for a Random Post by Tag plugin that enables me to specify the number of random posts and the tag they should match. I’ll be manually inserting it in my theme, so I don’t want a widget. If you know of anything like that or can write it, please let me know.
5. eren says:

   October 3, 2009 at 6:13 am

   What is manuel adding code ? My theme isnot widget ready, please help..
6. Deniz says:

   October 4, 2009 at 5:27 pm

   how can i use it without widget ?
7. Jon says:

   November 18, 2009 at 11:00 pm

   Excellent plugin, just what I needed! Wondering if you could shed some light as to where/how the excerpt length can be controlled within this widget? Is it using the default wordpress excerpt length? Dug around in the PHP a bit but couldn’t work it out.

   Thanks in advance for any help, and thanks for the plugin all together!
   • Stephanie says:

     November 18, 2009 at 11:03 pm

     It does use the default excerpt length, unless you have the_excerpt Reloaded installed. Then you’ll get a couple of extra option fields, including the length.

     WP 2.9 includes support for customizing excerpt length as well as the [...] at the end.
8. Lynne Robson says:

   December 4, 2009 at 2:55 pm

   For some reason it only seems to be picking up the most recent post in the category…

   I also have your recent post plugin active…could they be conflicting?
9. Lionel says:

   December 28, 2009 at 5:28 am

   A nice widget. Thanks a lot.

   I need to put this wodget manually in my html-code. Can you give me a php-code which launch this pluging. Instead a sidebar option in WP. Please!
10. Ys says:

    December 31, 2009 at 1:33 pm

    Nice plugin
    but is there any way to also make the category random, I mean I just want a bunch of random posts from various categories ?
11. Stephanie says:

    January 12, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    Lynne, I’m pretty sure I’m using the two on the same blog without conflicts. I’ll double-check, though.

    Lionel, it’s in the works, but not yet.

    Ys, no, there are other plugins that display random posts from any category. This one is more specific.
12. Todd Googins says:

    March 27, 2010 at 11:11 am

    Stephanie,

    I am having the same problem as Lynne Robson. It is definitely only showing the most recent post pulled from a category. How can I fix that so that it is truly random?

    Thank you so much for your plug-in.

    Todd
13. Stuart Kushner says:

    June 16, 2010 at 1:34 pm

    Plug-in is awesome but I am trying to figure out how to change the excerpt so that it does not display so many characters. Is there a viariable I can change? Is that an option you might soon incorporate?

    Good job.

    Stu
    • steph says:

      June 16, 2010 at 2:14 pm

      Stu, if you’re using the_excerpt Reloaded, you’ll have an option right in the widget itself to limit the number of words. Otherwise, you can put a few lines of code in your functions.php file. However, with that method, you’ll be changing the lengths of all your excerpts across your site, not just the one shown in the widget.
      • Stuart Kushner says:

        June 16, 2010 at 2:52 pm

        the site is at http://sodeepdemo.ofyourwebsite.com and I do not understand what you mean by “the_excerpt Reloaded”. I see the code in the Widget Editor but I am not a programmer. So, I don’t know what to do. As I am using your plug-in, I do not have an option to limit the number of characters. And I don’t want to make a global change to the website.

        Sorry if I am being a pain.

        Stu
        202-462-4290
        • steph says:

          June 16, 2010 at 3:27 pm

          It’s a separate plugin you can install. My widget supports it, and you’ll get a couple of extra option fields if the other plugin is activated, including the length.
14. Stuart Kushner says:

    June 16, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Wow. That was simple and it works. Thank you so much for your help! :)

    Stu
15. David says:

    October 13, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    Hello,
    Thank you very much for this plugin it’s perfect !
    I have a question :
    I use custom fields in every posts. How can i put custom fields in this plugin ?

    The exemple below doesn’t work…
    Ex:
    ID, “apercu”, $single = true); ?>

    Thank you very much Steph !!
    David
    • Paul Widdershoven says:

      May 3, 2011 at 8:50 am

      Is it possible to modify the code to include -custom field value of the random post must also equal the value of the post.

      If I could be so bold – If so what would be the code?
16. Craig Paterson says:

    October 14, 2010 at 10:06 am

    Stephanie, many thanks for the great plugin, although I am having the same issue as Lynne Robson except it is only first post published in the category which is being picked up and used.
    I don’t suppose you have any ideas what could be causing this to happen?
    Thanks in advance,
    Craig
17. Lana says:

    October 19, 2010 at 8:40 am

    Hi . . . This is a great plugin!

    I was wanting to know if something is possible? I am using the plugin in the fotter of my pages and haved edited it to include the gd star rating and the image for the random post.

    Problem: I decided that instead of using
    
    to get the image placed into the content of the post, I have coded my theme to show all images in the gallery using . . .
    
    Since changing to using the gallery code, I cannot get an image to show in your plugin.

    Goal: Would you have any suggestions as to what code to use to accomplish showing the first or last image, and what could be the only image in the gallery attached to that random post, in your plugin? I know just enough php to be dangerous. lol
18. Lana says:

    October 19, 2010 at 8:42 am

    apologies but the code tag did not seem to work.

    was using:
    ?php get_the_post_thumbnail( $id, $size, $attr ); ?

    trying to use but not working:
    ?php echo do_shortcode(“[gallery]“); ?
19. David says:

    October 19, 2010 at 5:23 pm

    Hello Steph,
    I use “Simple Post Thumbnails” and i want to include the thumbs for each post from “Random Posts from Category”

    I tried this code but it doesn’t works :
    img alt=”?php the_title(); ?” src=”?php echo p75GetThumbnail($post->ID, null, null); ?” border=”0″ /

    Thank you for your help.
    David
20. Foad says:

    December 2, 2010 at 9:47 am

    hi, thanks for this plugin.

    when i use this plugin for one of my categories with 1300 posts it’s not work.but when use for other categories whit less post it’s work wery well. what can i do for this problem?

    thanks for your help.
21. Go adsense network says:

    January 1, 2011 at 7:13 pm

    how to display manual this plugins, what code to use, for example i want display on the search page

    thanks
22. StephK says:

    March 2, 2011 at 5:23 pm

    Is there an easy way to get this plugin to show custom post types instead of regular posts?
23. StephK says:

    March 2, 2011 at 6:15 pm

    I answered my own question – it was very easy! I modified the query to include post_type=any
24. Paul Widdershoven says:

    May 8, 2011 at 2:56 pm

    Is it possible to modify the code to include -custom field value of the random post must also equal the value of the post.

    If I could be so bold – If so what would be the code?