WordPress
WordPress
How to create a ‘random posts button’ in WordPress
By 
Giancarlo Colfer
Published: | (3) Comments
Press a button and have WordPress serve you a random post!
The powerful & free WordPress open source blogging tool and content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL, allows for various ways to output posts. One such way is by outputting a list of randomly selected posts using the MySQL RAND() function for the orderby parameter value in get_posts.
But what if you simply want to avoid displaying random posts on a page and just want to link to a random post?
Read on for a how-to after the jump.
First we will need to hook in our query variable, create the rewrite rule and the function for the random posts. Paste the following PHP code unto your WordPress functions.php file.
Note: For greater code maintainability, I recommend creating a new directory within your themes folder named “lib” i.e. /lib/, then creating a new PHP file within that /lib/ directory named function_wp_random_post.php holding the following code.
<?php
add_action('init','random_add_rewrite');
function random_add_rewrite() {
global $wp;
$wp->add_query_var('random');
add_rewrite_rule('random/?$', 'index.php?random=1', 'top');
}
add_action('template_redirect','random_template');
function random_template() {
if (get_query_var('random') == 1) {
$posts = get_posts('post_type=post&orderby=rand&numberposts=1');
foreach($posts as $post) {
$link = get_permalink($post);
}
wp_redirect($link,307);
exit;
}
}
?>
You can then call it in your functions.php with a simple PHP include call e.g., include(TEMPLATEPATH.'/lib/function-wp-random-post.php');
And link to it by creating a hyperlink like the following:
<a class="link-random" rel="bookmark" href="/index.php?random=1" title="Random article">Random article</a>
Or add it to a Widget by going to Appearance > Widgets within your WordPress Dashboard and simply dragging a text widget into your desired sidebar with the provided code above in that text widget.
In order to use the /random/ permalink or to customize it, you will need WordPress permalinks enabled. After which, you will need to edit your WordPress installation’s main root .htaccess file and change the standard .htaccess file from:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
to the following:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^random/ /index.php?random=1
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Looking at the above code, we simply added RewriteRule ^random/ /index.php?random=1 right after RewriteBase /
You can rename the random link URL to whatever you’d like. Make sure to edit function_wp_random_posts.php and your .htaccess file accordingly. Going forward, you’ll need to place a link to /random/ on your site:
<a class="link-random" rel="bookmark" href="/random/" title="Random article">Random article</a>
Note: If you are using the W3 Total Cache plugin with the database caching option on, then add the following rules in the exclusion list.
/random/
/index.php?random=1
Note: If you are using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast’s, make sure to have the option “Redirect Ugly URLs” on.
At this point, you should have yourself a phenomenal random post button for your WordPress website! A Live DEMO is available on my blog’s sidebar to check out.
Claudia said 10 years ago: Thank you, it is exactly what i was looking for! February 23, 2015 at 11:08am
