One Random Post (not random list or link)

Hmm. You can initialize The Loop to display a single post by inserting
query_posts() just before it with an argument of "p=ID" — ID being replaced with the numeric ID of a post. To pass it a random post ID requires a way of retrieving the ID randomly. So try this as your query_posts() code:

<?php
$rand_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
query_posts("p=$rand_id");
?>

Might I suggest my random posts plugin? It’s a single template tag that you insert into your templates. You can select how many random posts to display (you want just one); as well as which categories to use (or zero for all categories).

So, you could do this in your index.php:

<?php
$p = random_posts(0, 1);
query_posts("p=$p");
// run through the Loop as normal now

See the query_posts() documentation for additional details.

My code would also go before The Loop, as I note above, and not *in* it:

<?php
$rand_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
query_posts("p=$rand_id");
?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

~Post-related code and template tags go here. ~

<?php endwhile; ?>

I’m trying to do this single, random-post thing too, but I can’t get Skippy’s plugin to work. When I place the few lines of code just above “the loop” I just get an error message.

Do I have to comment out some other lines to make it work? Which ones?

Oh yeah, I’m also trying to exclude a category… however just coding
... WHERE post_status = 'publish' AND post_category != 1 ...
does not seem to work whatsoever. It actually only shows one post all the time that actually has that category number.

@ njg97r: just include the permalink instead of all the post data. Something like this should work for you:

<?php
$rand_id = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = 'publish' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1");
query_posts("p=$rand_id");
?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>">random</a>

<?php endwhile; ?>

Yes, you load alot of the db, but since PHP and MySQL is so fast, that wouldn’t be a problem at all. Everytime the page reloads, you’ll get a new “random” link (basically, the permalink to the individual post).

I think my problem is solved… I should’ve called setup_postdata($post); too.

Well, first of all, the link leads to a completely unrelated website: you trying to sneak in some advertisement?

Can you post the snippet of code here? I recon the ‘…’ in your post means the ‘[…]’ when calling the excerpt… are you calling the excerpt? If this is the case you need to hack WordPress itself.

/wp-includes/functions-formatting.php
Locate:

function wp_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
global $post;
if ( '' == $text ) {
$text = $post->post_content;
$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt_length = 55;
$words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
array_pop($words);
array_push($words, '[...]');
$text = implode(' ', $words);
}
}
return $text;
}

Change:

function wp_trim_excerpt($text) { // Fakes an excerpt if needed
global $post;
if ( '' == $text ) {
$text = $post->post_content;
$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
$text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
$text = strip_tags($text);
$excerpt_length = 55;
$words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
if (count($words) > $excerpt_length) {
array_pop($words);
array_push($words, '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '">...</a>');
$text = implode(' ', $words);
}
} else {
$text = $text . '... <a href="' . get_permalink() . '">more</a>&raquo;';
}
return $text;
}