[wp-hackers] show 2 random posts from the last 20 posts from the Featured category

[Kirk Wight]

Thinking out loud, you could query for the last twenty posts returned in
random order, and pull the first two of off the results.

On 21 February 2013 16:51, Haluk Karamete <halukkaramete at gmail.com> wrote:

> When you want to show 2 random posts from the last 20 posts from the
> Featured category, what's the best way to handle it?
>
> When I go,
>
> $args = array(
>    'category_name' => 'featured',
>    'posts_per_page' => 2),
>
> it pulls the last 2 posts from the featured cat. Obviously no
> randomness can be achieved as such. It's the same as asking gimme the
> last 2 posts from featured.
>
> If I go
>
> $args = array(
>    'category_name' => 'featured',
>    'posts_per_page' => 2,
>    'orderby' => 'rand'),
>
> then I get the two 2 random posts. but then, recent'ness goes out the
> window. I may be randomly picking featured posts that are as old as
> the website is.
>
> For a moment, I thought the following would have worked.
>
> $args = array(
>    'category_name' => 'featured',
>    'posts_per_page' => 20,
>    'orderby' => 'date rand'    //notice the double order by here
> );   // inspired by the
>
> http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Order_.26_Orderby_Parameters
> codex entry.
>
> I thought, this would have first picked the last 20 posts, and then
> randomly shuffle the order and then return the results. If that were
> to work, I would have exited the while loop at iteration 2 achieving
> my goal.
> But that too fails. It totally ignores the second aspect, the 'rand'
> that is. and you always get the  recent 20 in the most recent to least
> recent order.
>
> So, how do you achieve that original goal which is "show 2 random
> posts from the last 20 posts from the Featured category"?
> _______________________________________________
> wp-hackers mailing list
> wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers
>