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Can I Randomize Posts w/ a .com Account?

  1. sandy13
    Member

    hi there. people who are smarter than me!

    i'm making a site for a tshirt design contest at http://ecptshirtcontest.wordpress.com. i picked a theme that will let me post giant images of each design that can be voted on using the little nero thumbs ups and downs. does that make sense?

    is there a way to randomize the order in which my posts (which will actually be images of tshirt designs) appear to readers? i'm hoping that randomizing the order will make it so that no designer's artwork gets shafted by being stuck at the bottom of the page and getting no eyeballs/votes.

    is there some setting i can flip on to randomize the order? i found this site (http://www.specialops.co.nz/blog/random-post-order-in-wordpress/), but it seems like i'd need a .org account where i can edit the code to use any of their ideas.

    also - am i using the best theme for the type of site i'm trying to create?

    thank you!
    sandy

    The blog I need help with is ecptshirtcontest.wordpress.com.

  2. raincoaster
    Member

    http://ecptshirtcontest.wordpress.com//?random is the magic code. Use a Custom Menu and have a tab for "Random Design".

  3. sandy13
    Member

    thanks for that - but is there a way to see ALLL of the posts on the front page, just in a random order?

  4. tangbinhduong
    Member

    Why don't you use a page, and use it a the default homepage?
    In that page,you can embed an image gallery that will randomize all the contestants' photos.

    And use a custom menu to randomize the links to each contestant post.

  5. tangbinhduong
    Member

    Use the menu as a footer but write almost nothing in the page (the one you will set as homepage).

  6. tangbinhduong
    Member

    And if you are new to wordpress, you should distinguish pages from posts. Sorry, I look like a spammer now.

  7. timethief
    Member

    @sandy13
    It makes no sense at all to display all posts on your front page. It may seem okay to you now but can your imagine how long it would take a blog with 600 posts like mine to load if every post was on the front page? Page loading time is a page ranking factor. Studies demonstrate visitors will wait only 3 - 4 seconds for a blog to load. Consequently we bloggers have adopted strategies to reduce page loading time. Also note that our blogs are designed to display posts in reverse chronological order with the most recent post at the top. This cannot be changed. The only alternative is to create a book-like structure if you don't wish to have the conventional structure.

  8. timethief
    Member

    @@sandy13
    Staff have provided help for those who want to structure their blog like a website. > http://en.support.wordpress.com/using-wordpress-to-create-a-website/

    What’s critical is:
    (1) a clear comprehension of the differences between pages and posts > http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-vs-page/
    (2) a clear comprehension of the fact that there is only one dynamic page in a blog for posts and we cannot post to more than that one page. But we can create the appearance that we have posted to more than one page.

    We organize our posts by assigning Categories and/or sub-categories to them. When we publish a post it automatically appears on the running page for posts and also on the Categories pages and Archives pages. Note: There must be one published post in each Category in order for there to be anything to display.

    A custom menu allows you to display Categories with drop-downs to sub-categories in tabs along the horizontal navigation where normally only Pages tabs are displayed. If you wish you can also include Pages with drop-downs to sub-pages, and custom links in your custom menu as well.

    These are the how-to instructions:
    How to create a custom menu. http://en.support.wordpress.com/menus/

    With regard to random post display if you wish you can place a linked image to the code in a text widgets and display it in the top of your sidebar.

  9. sandy13
    Member

    tangbinhduong:
    thank you! that's a good idea - i could just put all of the images on one static page and imbed a poll on another page, instead of having people vote for images right above or below them.

    timethief:
    thanks! all of this is really helpful. i do understand how wordpress works and have other blogs, but admit that i haven't had a need like this before and therefore wasn't sure if it was even doable. like everyone, i always just assume wordpress is the answer to everything!

    my book club's site is http://www.whatshouldweread.wordpress.com and we've been using the nero ratings to vote on which book we want to read each month. that's sort of what i wanted to do with ecptshirtcontest.wordpress.com, so that people could vote on their favorite tshirt design, but i'm getting from you that wordpress.com might ot be the right tool for the job. it's not perfect with the book club site either - the hitch there is that you can't reset the ratings back to zero each month.

    THANK YOU for your time and help!

  10. timethief
    Member

    You're welcome and best wishes with your blog. :)

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