AJAX Random Posts – a new WP plugin (of mine)
Firstly, I’d like to show off a bit: hey I’ve caught up with the crowd, now both of my sites (this one and Thica.net) are upgraded to WordPress 2.7 – well, let’s hope that it is not prone to new vulnerabilities. The most significant change is the admin section – for the first time in my life I have to admit that it looks even better than the front-end. Is it good, or is it bad (my baby), I don’t know, but if you are using my plugin(s) and are worried about the compatibility, rest assured: they all work in this new versions. That is, of course, unless you tell me that they’re not.
But hey, this post is not about WordPress 2.7! There are hundreds of blogs out there babbling about it already! If you’re a careful reader (definition: a careful reader is someone who reads something from the title on), you probably know it, I’ve managed to used some free time to write another WP plugin called AJAX Random Posts, and this post is more or less its homepage.
As its name is saying, AJAX Random Posts (AjaxRP) display a list of randomly chosen posts from your WordPress-powered blog. Yeah, it’s nothing new, such a concept is very popular and has been greatly done by several plugins before. The limitation of those plugins however, is the lack of cache plugins compatibility. For example, you install a random post plugin. Then a visitor comes to post A, and under a post he’s served with 5 other random ones, let’s say C, Y, M, K, and J. If you have WP-Super Cache enabled on your blog, the post A is cached for, like, one hour. During that one hour, any visitor that reads post A will be served with its cached version, with C, Y, M, K, and J following. You must agree with me, it’s not so random anymore 
.
So, the only difference my AjaxRP is making is its “AJAX” part. With AjaxRP, the random list is NOT generated along with post A. Instead, it makes an AJAX call to the server after the page is loaded (more precisely, after the DOM is ready) and retrieves a list of random posts. This way, it works regardless of whether or not you have a cache plugin installed. That means, each page refresh shows a new random list. And I guess that is what should be called “random”.
FAQ
Q: Do you provide a template tag/ post tag?
A: Absolutely. If you don’t want the random posts to be display after every post, just set “Automatically display the random posts in a single post page?” to “No” in the Settings page, and
- Manually put <!–ajaxrp–> at the end of your post, or
- Place this php code: <?php if (function_exists(‘ajaxrp’)) ajaxrp(); ?>
at a proper place in your template’s single.php page
Q: Where can I find a demo?
A: Right here! Take a look at the end of this post.
Q: How do I support this plugin?
A: Please link back to this post or blog about it. Also I would appreciate a lot if you can rate this plugin 5 stars in the WordPress repository.
History
Full history can be found here.
Download
Head here.
What others are reading
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Lazy
15 Dec, 2008
Hi,
nice plugin, thank you very much.
Only one thing, please change get_settings to get_option
have a nice day
Chris
Lazy
16 Dec, 2008
thank you very much for the update fix in 0.3
there is still one get_settings function in it
have a really good day
Chris
phoenix.heart
16 Dec, 2008
Hi Chris, I will make it pure next version then
Stewart
17 Dec, 2008
Hi,
I’m looking for a way to display recent posts of a particular category on a page, and I’m wondering if your plugin might be one way to do that. What I’m wanting to do is have a page on our church website called “Film and Faith”, which describes what that particular ministry is, and then at the bottom of the page, have a box with the most recent posts of movies we’ve watched and discussed. Maybe there is a simple way to do this without a plugin, I don’t know.
If you could help, I’d be much obliged!
Thanks,
Stewart
phoenix.heart
17 Dec, 2008
Steward, this is outside of my plugin’s scope. If you know about coding, you may take a look at the function get_posts (notice the arguments $numberposts, $category/$category_name, and $orderby). Or you may want to check Recent Posts plugin for a much easier way.
Chris Kobar
31 Dec, 2008
I’ve setup your plugin but am having a problem. I have an area in my sidebar (which appears on every page) where I want to manually display one excerpt, but nothing appears there at all. Everything seems configured properly and I have included your above manual code — — and yet nothing renders between my outer divs. I’ve also changed the get_settings in your code to get_option to see if that makes a difference, but nothing. Any help?
phoenix.heart
1 Jan, 2009
Hi Chris,
Are you placing the code <?php if (function_exists(‘ajaxrp’)) ajaxrp(); ?> or <!--ajaxrp--> ?
Dave
7 Jan, 2009
Is there a way to display a horizontal list of 1-5 random posts on my non-Wordpress home page?
Thank you!
phoenix.heart
7 Jan, 2009
Hi Dave, I’m pretty sure there’s a way, but since this plugin is for WordPress only, that feature would be out of its scope…
Dave
7 Jan, 2009
No, my blog is Wordpress-based, but my blog is in a subdirectory. I want to display the random posts on my home page, which is not part of my blog. Is there a way for me to do a call like {?phpinclude(“http://www.domain.tld/blog/random_posts.php”);?} ?
Thanks for the fast response!
phoenix.heart
7 Jan, 2009
Hi Dave,
Just like almost all other WordPress plugins, mine relies on the WP functions and hooks to work. As your homepage is irrelevant to the WP core behind, I’m afraid my plugin won’t work in this case.
However, I believe you can write some php code in the homepage and manually retrieve the random posts instead of using the prebuilt WP functions.
Jim
9 Jan, 2009
Hi,
I’m interested in creating a message board that uses WordPress.
Does your plugin display a post, then after a period time display another post for n number of posts?
baron
16 Feb, 2009
hi. Thanks for plugin
perfect.
Regards
Lily
18 Feb, 2009
Hi,
We’re trying to place the random posts in our sidebar and are having the same problem that Chris had. We tried both pieces of code and have only ended up with this:
“Random Posts
Loading…
{post}”
I’m pretty new at all this stuff, maybe there is a quick easy fix. Any suggestions? Thanks.
phoenix.heart
18 Feb, 2009
Hi Lily, please note that the script should be put inside The Loop.
Lily
18 Feb, 2009
amazing -it works! Thanks for your quick help.
Is there an easy way to stop it from taking images from the posts so that it only shows linked titles?
phoenix.heart
18 Feb, 2009
Great it works for you Lily. But I’m not sure why it’s taking images from your posts. What is the link to your site?
Lily
18 Feb, 2009
Figured it out. We were using the Thumbnails for Excerpts plugin, which automatically displays a thumbnail, apparently indiscriminately.
Thanks for your help.
Omelyn
20 Feb, 2009
Very nice plugin.
boban piskulic
22 Feb, 2009
Hi, i added this plugin in sidebar,and everything is perfect on single post pages but on my homepage and pages nothing show, is there any way to display it in sidebar on homepage too?
please help
boban
Chris
25 Feb, 2009
Just upgraded to the newest version and…no more displaying of posts! Worked like a charm before the change last week, but now the post no longer renders. I have it set to show a single post in a red block on my sidebar (non-widget; manual coding) and loved your plug-in. Now, flummoxed. I checked out the code and cannot figure out why it will no longer work. Weird. Grr. Thoughts?
phoenix.heart
25 Feb, 2009
Chris, as you can see it still works for me… Could you please check if you’re using a div with ID “ajaxrp”, because the plugin would fill this div with the posts.
And btw, your site is very stylish. Awesome
David
28 Feb, 2009
Hi I would like to add ‘random post’ to my original post showing in the main page (As Announcement). How can i do that?
robert aghat
1 Mar, 2009
nice?
phoenix.heart
1 Mar, 2009
Hi David, have you tried the tag?
David
1 Mar, 2009
Can u advice what tag should i add in the ‘post’ field?
Der Schweizer Narr
2 Mar, 2009
nice plugin phoenix!
only idee… it is possible to prefer radom postings again the actual tag clouds ?
example:
- when tags mostly used, then prefer radom postings for this tags
Why this? On my blog, tag cloud reflect my main interest’s.
TomsTricks
6 Mar, 2009
Thanks for this great plugin.After using this plugin in my site,the Pages/visit ratio dramatically increases.
Valerie
16 Mar, 2009
Great idea for a plugin! I’m currently using the Random Posts plugin by Rob Marsh, because I can set it to show only the image and link to the article. It’s the only one I’ve seen that does that. But he seems to have stopped supporting it. Any chance you can make yours do the same? I’d love to have the Ajax function to get past my caching as well as an active author.
phoenix.heart
16 Mar, 2009
Hi Valerie, I don’t know about the images – where are they from? About the link, you can use {url} tag to “Formart each item in the list”.
Valerie
19 Mar, 2009
The images are set via custom field when creating a post. Take a look at the sidebar on my site – see the Be Random area? Each of those pics links to its associated post. That’s what I’d like to achieve with your plugin. Possible?
phoenix.heart
19 Mar, 2009
Sorry Valerie, I’m afraid custom fields have not been supported in this current version of Ajax Random Posts (yet). Definitely I will think about it in the next version.
Gurumustuk
3 Apr, 2009
Would be great to make a widget option as well. It’s no fun to have to harcode php code in a template file….then when you update it….or replace it get’s overwritten.
edo
14 Apr, 2009
Yeah, just like Gurumustuk, I’ also wait for the widget option.Nice plugin though…
blued888
28 Apr, 2009
Great plugin! But somehow I can’t seem to get it to work on my index.php page. Is it restricted to single.php only? Thanks!
phoenix.heart
28 Apr, 2009
Hi, as for now the plugin uses a post’s ID to exclude it from the returned results, that’s why it only works with single.php. However, I’m thinking of a way to overcome this limitation. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a problem in the next version.
blued888
28 Apr, 2009
phoenix.heart,
Hi, it would be great if it can also be used on other pages (index.php, category.php, page.php, etc). Would possibly, greatly increase page views.
Looking forward to the next version!
iTouchTW
1 May, 2009
That’s a great plugin
blued888
3 May, 2009
Chiming in again! It has increased page views on my site since search engine traffic is offered select posts from my information pool. It allows them to “hop around” my blog.
Thanks! Will be sure to check out the next version once available!
Rob Angeles
14 May, 2009
Hi! I tried installing this awhile ago and when I tried testing it, it was taking too long to load one blog post. There was no error during the plugin activation.
Thanks!
Lamnk
14 May, 2009
A widget for the sidebar would be nice
Minea Adrian
8 Jul, 2009
Excelent plugin, i write something about it on my blog. Congratulations!
phoenix.heart
8 Jul, 2009
Thanks, Minea
_KmL_
2 Aug, 2009
Thank u, very nice.
little-short
30 Aug, 2009
wow gr8 plugin
Maor
1 Nov, 2009
Hi,
Plugins looks great. Just wanted to know if there is a way to exclude certain categories from the randomizer, or even better – let the randmize choose random posts from the same category of the current single post.
Thanks
סרטים לצפייה ישירה
8 Nov, 2009
Thanks for this great plugin
kerr
27 Nov, 2009
so ,does this a test ~>?a demo?