[Plugin: Mini Loops] place in template

Look under Template Tag in the Other Notes section.

<?php
$args = array(
        'title' => __( 'Recent Posts', 'mini-loops' ),
        'hide_title' => 0,
        'title_url' => '',
        'number_posts' => 3,
        'post_offset' => 0,
        'post_type' => 'post',
        'post_status' => 'publish',
        'order_by' => 'date',
        'order' => 'DESC',
        'reverse_order' => 0,
        'shuffle_order' => 0,
        'ignore_sticky' => 1,
        'only_sticky' => 0,
        'exclude_current' => 1,
        'categories' => '',
        'tags' => '',
        'tax' => '',
        'custom_fields' => '',
        'exclude' => '',
        'before_items' => '<ul>',
        'item_format' => '<li><a href="[url]">[title]</a><br />[excerpt]</li>',
        'after_items' => '</ul>',
        );
miniloops( $args );
?>

($args is showing default values)

Hopefully this will help you understand possible values for each argument.

<?php
// boolean: 0=false, 1=true
$args = array(
        'title' => 'Your Title', // the heading for the output
        'hide_title' => 0, // boolean
        'title_url' => '', // a valid url, where the heading should link to
        'number_posts' => 3, // any number, how many posts to show
        'post_offset' => 0, // any number, how many posts to skip
        'post_type' => 'post', // any valid post type
        'post_status' => 'publish', // any valid post status
        'order_by' => 'date', // 'id', 'author', 'title', 'date', 'modified', 'parent', 'rand', 'comment_count', 'menu_order'
        'order' => 'DESC', // 'DESC' or 'ASC'
        'reverse_order' => 0, // boolean
        'shuffle_order' => 1, // boolean
        'ignore_sticky' => 1, // boolean
        'only_sticky' => 0, // boolean
        'exclude_current' => 1, // boolean
        'categories' => '', // comma separated list of category IDs
        'tags' => '', // comma separated list of tag IDs
        'tax' => '', // query-string style taxonomy-termID pairs (Ex: category=1,2,4&post_tag=6,12)
        'custom_fields' => '', // query-string style key-value pairs (Ex: meta_key=meta_value&key2=value2)
        'exclude' => '', // comma separated list if post IDs to exclude
        'before_items' => '<ul>', // html at beginning of output
        'item_format' => '<li><a href="[url]">[title]</a><br />[excerpt]</li>', // html format for each result
        'after_items' => '</ul>',// html at end of output
        );
miniloops( $args );
?>

I’m not sure why 'shuffle_order' => 1 would result in corrupted text. I’m unable to replicate this issue.

If you’re copying my example formats directly into the miniloops() function instead of the widget field, you’ll have to replace the single quotes (should be 2, around the fallback parameter in the [image] shortcode) with double quotes. That should prevent the page from breaking.

Here’s the very simple code for getting the 5 most recent posts, and then 5 random posts. However, the 5 random posts *may* contain some of the 5 most recent posts. There’s not currently an easy way to avoid this.

<?php
//5 recent posts
$args = array(
        'number_posts' => 5,
        );
miniloops( $args );

//5 random posts
$args = array(
        'number_posts' => 5,
        'order_by' => 'rand'
        );
miniloops( $args );
?>