10.1.10 – Plugin has been updated to allow you to choose the order of posts if not displaying randomly.
The other day I was in desperate need of a good, random, related posts plugin. In the end, I couldn’t find exactly what I needed so I thought I would just make it myself!
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Description
This plugin is a very lightweight method of including random related posts anywhere on your signle.php template. It has a variety of options available, including:
- Choose the number of Posts to show
- Choose whether it displays these posts randomly, or in order of newest post.
- Choose whether to display a title, what tags to use, and what text should be displayed (e.g. H3)
- Choose a class for the main ul
Installation
- Upload the `random_related_posts_by_cat` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Place `<?php relatedPosts(); ?>` in your templates – please see the description for more options.
More Options
To edit the options available, use the following codes:
<?php relatedPosts(
$ppp = 4,
$rand = true,
$rPinctitle = true,
$rPtitletag = 'h3',
$rPtitle = 'Related Posts',
$rPulclass = 'related_posts',
$orderby = 'title',
$order = 'ASC'
); ?>
Where:
- $ppp = Number of posts to display (Any integer allowed)
- $rand = sets the display to random (true/false)
- $rPinctitle = Displays the title (true/false)
- $rPtitletag = The type of tag to wrap the title in (Default h3, but it can be any valid HTML tag)
- $rPtitle = The title to be displayed (This can be any text value)
- $rPulclass = This sets the class of the ul (This can be any text value)
- $rPexcerpt = Allows you to choose whether to display the excerpt (true/false)
- $orderby = This allows you to order the posts by certain parameters (title/author/date/modified/menu_order/parent/ID/none/comment_count) If you want to choose the order of your posts, be sure to set $rand to false
- $order = This can either be Ascending or Descending (ASC/DESC)
Extra Notes
I will continue to develop this plugin if I need to, so feel free to make any requests in the comments!
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08:02 22/12/2010
I found this plugin useful for displaying related posts but I suggest to provide only title of related posts, please can you guide me.
08:55 22/12/2010
Hi Shahid, I have actually updated this plugin yesterday to allow this functionality – I have just uploaded it to the site. If you re-download it and install, you can then set $rPexcerpt to true/false. Alternatively, keep track of the plugin updates here – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/random-related-posts-based-on-category/.
I hope this helps!
17:04 29/12/2010
Very good!
10:16 10/01/2011
Hi, nice work,is there anyway of placing posts in preferred order.
I use wordpress alot.I am working on my own site and will be adding a blog.
Any pointers welcome and,again appreciate your work with the plug in.
11:06 10/01/2011
Hi there, great idea! I have now updated the plugin to allow you to choose the order that the posts are displayed if you have $rand set to false. Take a look at the updated blog post (this page still), I have added two extra options with usage instructions. Let me know if you get on OK with it.
Also, would anyone like me to add a post thumbnail feature to this?
Thanks,
James
14:34 08/02/2011
I have these errors on XHTML validation:
document type does not allow element “p” here; missing one of “button”, “map”, “object”, “ins”, “del”, “noscript” start-tag
14:53 08/02/2011
Hi openredes,
You are absolutely right – I will amend the current version of this plugin tomorrow to remove that. To remove it yourself, simply browse to wp-content/plugins/random-related-posts/random-related-posts.php
Change this line:
< ?php the_excerpt(); ?>
to:
< ?php echo get_the_excerpt(); ?>
But be sure to remove the space between < and ?
14:21 09/02/2011
Thanks so much James, all is working now!
19:11 01/05/2011
Hi James,
Thank you for your plugin.
I use your plugin to randomise my posts for my new website and found it works very well.
Is there a way that it could randomise the posts only once (say per day) and not every time I navigate to another page of posts.
The reason is that when I move to another page of posts, the whole post order is changed every time which means that it is harder to actually find certain posts that someone may be looking for. Hope that make sense.
I need to randomise my posts only once per day.
Thank you