Posted 3 years ago #
I would like to display 5 random post exceprts, along with their categories, in the format
[excerpt 1] [category1, category2, category3]
[excerpt 2] [category1, category2, category3]
..
..
How can I do this? I was going through the codex and think I can use this as a starting point, but how do I change the syntax to choose posts randomly?
query_posts(array('category__and'=>array(1,3),'showposts'=>2,'orderby'=>title,'order'=>DESC));
Posted 3 years ago #
It would be something like this:
<ul>
<?php
$rand_posts = get_posts('post_type=post&numberposts=5&orderby=RAND()');
foreach( $rand_posts as $post ) :
setup_postdata($post);
?>
<li><?php the_excerpt(); the_category(', ') ?></li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>You can easily modify this to add permalinks, dates, etc...
Posted 3 years ago #
Thank you!
Posted 3 years ago #
Ok, tried this out and it does return 5 posts, but they don't seem random. They're the last 5 posts in descending order. Is there some other way to select randomly?
Posted 3 years ago #
Do you have more than 5 posts? lol.
The code should work... I've tried it out.
WordPress even has a doc on it:
See http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/get_posts#Random_posts
This example omits the setup_postdata() command. (This command enables you to access all post data as opposed to just a few items such as title, permalink, etc..)
Posted 3 years ago #
Yes, got around 60 posts. Anyway I tried cutting and pasting the code above directly and it still gives the last 5 posts in order of recentness.
Posted 3 years ago #
Very strange... Well, I'm at a loss.
Posted 3 years ago #
What version WordPress are you running?
Posted 3 years ago #
plugging "orderby=RAND()" into the query_posts string doesn't work for me in 2.5 :-(
Posted 3 years ago #
What was the problem? Was it just that the posts returned weren't random, or was it some syntax error?
Posted 3 years ago #
if that was for me, the results weren't random - just got default (by post date) order
however just looked in the query.php code and i think it's because it should be just "orderby=rand". hang on...
Posted 3 years ago #
YES that works :-D
Codex had that right, actually. You were looking at the wrong page. :)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts
Although now the get_posts page is wrong, since get_posts was modified to use the same functionality as query_posts. I'll fix it.
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