Trying to build a “Random Post & Thumbnail Widget”

  • fert

    (@felixo)


    14 years, 9 months ago

    Hi,

    using PHP Code Widget, I’m trying to build something that:
    – runs in the sidebar
    – randomly picks one post from the past
    – displays the title and a thumbnail (automatically generated)

    As I understand from this thread, I need to create a separate loop. Makes sense, so I took this piece of code, which seems reasonable, and turned it into this:

    <?php
$randomthumbquery = new WP_Query('showposts=999&random=true');
?>
<?php
if ($randomthumbquery->have_posts()) : while ($randomthumbquery->have_posts()) : $randomthumbquery->the_post();
?>
	<div>
		<h4><?php $randomthumbquery->the_title(); ?></h4>
		<p><?php $randomthumbquery->postimage('thumbnail') ?>; ?></p>
	</div>
<?php
endwhile; else: ?>
	<p>Oops, no posts!</p>
<?php
endif;
?>

    As some of you might see, though I learned (and forgot all about) C# a year ago, I have no clue, how exactly PHP works. The code does not work.

    Well, before changing this

    <h4><?php the_title(); ?></h4>
<p><?php postimage('thumbnail')?>;

    into this,

    <h4><?php $randomthumbquery->the_title(); ?></h4>
<p><?php $randomthumbquery->postimage('thumbnail')?>;

    at least a title was displayed (but it’s always the one from the main loop, hence my desire to mess around with the code.

    What do I need to do, to make this work? Another problem is that no thumbnail will be displayed, which, to me, seems to be a matter of paths messed up. But again: No clue how to do that in PHP.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter fert

    (@felixo)

    14 years, 9 months ago

    OK, I managed to get it done using yet another example:

    <div>
<?php
      $random_query = new WP_Query(array(
      'post__not_in' => $do_not_duplicate,
      'showposts' => 1,
      'cat' => '6',
      'orderby' => 'rand'
      ));
      while ($random_query->have_posts()) : $random_query->the_post(); ?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title();?></a>
    <?php endwhile; ?>
</div>

    The only thing that’s missing for me, now, is the thumbnail. Just adding postimage(‘thumbnail’) into the linked section does not work because of some directory issue.

    dzeta

    (@dzeta)

    14 years, 6 months ago

    Thank you for this code, I needed the random posts thumbnails displayed as well and I found a solution in using custom fields for those.

    So for each post I have a custom field named “thumbnail” and I put this line:

    <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><img src="<?php $values = get_post_custom_values("thumbnail"); echo $values[0]; ?>" alt="" width="XX" height="XX" /></a>

    ..instead of the following one in your code (XX to be replaced with the thumbnail width and height of course):

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

    Saijo George

    (@1800pocketpc)

    14 years, 4 months ago

    thanks

    syahuri

    (@syahuri)

    14 years, 2 months ago

    @dzeta: how do this work automatically?
    perhaps by taking the first picture in the article?
    I’m too lazy to create a custom field for the hundreds of blog posts

    pabile

    (@pabile)

    13 years, 10 months ago

    thanks a lot, felixo & DZeta. this is very helpful.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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