Introducing my first ever word press plug-in: Random Blog Article v1.0 (yay!).
Having set-up wordpress and had a play around I was very impressed by
- the usability of the administration panel
- how powerful and yet easy to install the plugins were
I did some research in to how wordpress had done this and discovered that making a plug-in myself wouldn’t be too difficult. On a side note, if you are interested in developing a plug-in, definitely start here: Writing a Plugin
On to the plug-in (at last). For more information on what it does, how to download it and how to install it, click {{post id=”random-blog-article-plugin” text=”here”}}.
Put simply it is a replacement for the blogroll only it displays just one random article from each of your favourite blogs and, by default, only one at a time. More than one at a time will have to wait for v1.1 if people take up any interest. At a set interval the current blog and article is replaced with a random new one via AJAX.
Using the admin panel page you can add as many of your favourite blogs to the plug-in as you wish, all cached to keep things speedy.
Take a look at the screenshots or just scroll to the top of the page for a preview.
It is in-fact a lot like the “Hot Blog” plug-in I’ve seen on the Wordpress Stats dashboard page. I couldn’t find any plug-ins like it, hence writing my own. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were in fact hundreds and I was just looking in the wrong place but at least I can say I tried! 
I’m thinking for my next plug-in, something that will allow me to easily link to other posts and pages within a blog without having to put in the full URL. That way if I ever change my permalink structure (for some strange reason) I don’t have to go back and change all my links. After some research I could only find one other plug-in like it which was Easy Post-To-Post. Please let me know if there is already a better way of doing this and I’ll stop reinventing the wheel.
Testing cat link
Random Blog Article Wordpress Plugin
Introducing my first ever word press plug-in: Random Blog Article v1.0 (yay!).
Having set-up wordpress and had a play around I was very impressed by
I did some research in to how wordpress had done this and discovered that making a plug-in myself wouldn’t be too difficult. On a side note, if you are interested in developing a plug-in, definitely start here: Writing a Plugin
On to the plug-in (at last). For more information on what it does, how to download it and how to install it, click {{post id=”random-blog-article-plugin” text=”here”}}.
Put simply it is a replacement for the blogroll only it displays just one random article from each of your favourite blogs and, by default, only one at a time. More than one at a time will have to wait for v1.1 if people take up any interest. At a set interval the current blog and article is replaced with a random new one via AJAX.
Using the admin panel page you can add as many of your favourite blogs to the plug-in as you wish, all cached to keep things speedy.
Take a look at the screenshots or just scroll to the top of the page for a preview.
It is in-fact a lot like the “Hot Blog” plug-in I’ve seen on the Wordpress Stats dashboard page. I couldn’t find any plug-ins like it, hence writing my own. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were in fact hundreds and I was just looking in the wrong place but at least I can say I tried!
I’m thinking for my next plug-in, something that will allow me to easily link to other posts and pages within a blog without having to put in the full URL. That way if I ever change my permalink structure (for some strange reason) I don’t have to go back and change all my links. After some research I could only find one other plug-in like it which was Easy Post-To-Post. Please let me know if there is already a better way of doing this and I’ll stop reinventing the wheel.
Testing cat link