Is there any scope to get one page randomly and plaster it up as the start page, but automatically every day?
I cannot answer this, I wrote your question ( & copied the permanent link) to one of the developers… let us hope!
-Helmut
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
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Well, I don't see it useful at all (imagine nav:top as the start page)
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
in soops case it would be usefull, and i can see the point of the request.
However, i would expect the amount of work needed to code this would be rather a lot.
Maybe to much to make it a worth while project at this moment of time.
An automatic start page is really not good for usability of a site! :)
I think about a "dynamic" link on nav:side build randomly selected of a table with all page names
collected from specified categories (to avoid such nav:top )
like ("_default" , "any_self_written_default2", a..s.o).
This would make sense to lead a visitor sometimes to not often visited or even very good (unwished)
hidden pages…
Or out of a self written "list of page names" ? Than the autor has it in his hand….
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
Well, I don't see it useful at all (imagine nav:top as the start page)
I can imagine
- [[module RandomPage exclude="nav,system,any_category_to_hide"]]
or
- [[module RandomPage category="_default,psychology,arts,any_category_to_display"]]
I don't think ListPages was around back when this got started, but I love to see a random order element for it. It would be great for displaying internal site advertisements. Say you've got 7 or eight features, and you want to display two at the top of the page, but not the same two all the time, random order and tags/category limiters in listpages would allow you to cycle through them automagically and get them all more or less even exposure.
Wow, thanks for the response guys :)
The reason I wanted to randomise it was to create a google gadget for a google homepage. Then either every time you logged into the homepage, or every day it would present a different random fact.
Thanks for your time, but the only way to do it if it isn't built into the Wiki, is PHP or Active Server pages on a hosted wb server, or possibly manually (and I couldn't guarantee that)
*edit* I see what you mean now about Nav Top - I've done my best to get rid of all that stuff, as it as quite conspicuous on the "list all pages" when I didn't have many facts. But I've decided to bulk out the main page a bit, and seeing as I have over 200 pages and counting, the risk for me of grabbing a duff page would be minimised. I think I have maybe 8 or so non-content pages. So yeah, I'd just set it as the "random" button. I'm not sure if that means I could generate it to, say random.html and reference that exclusively on the gadget..
Actually, come to think about it, it would be nice to have a randomiser anyway, as a way of viewing the facts.
Let me think… I would imagine that the site is coded in MySQL, so the HTML is generated dynamically from the table entries. What you would need to do is have a 'random' field that copied the contents from another random field. I'll do some research, see if it's feasible.
*edit* Ok, I hink this should do it… this query would have to run every time the random button is clicked, and then somehow display the first result as the random webpage:
<?php
$sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename
ORDER BY RAND()";
?>
Not sure how to display records as webpages. Random is a hell of a lot easier in MySQL than in Access, that's for sure.
Oh wait, you could save CPU time with this:
<?php
$sql = "SELECT * FROM tablename
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
?>
That limit should return one result rather than list the whole database.
The problem is, you DON'T want to display a random page as the home page of your wiki.
What you do want is a widget that display a random page.
You figered out, that it might be done if there were a module that changes your start page every now and then.
But it's not a good idea.
If you asked us how to get a random page to be displayed f.e. in some widget, we would (probably) think in better way about it.
Regards
Piotr
Piotr Gabryjeluk
visit my blog
Well, there is other things I wanted to do with it - a "random fact" button would probably be a better way of navigating my site. The jokes aren't quite as punchy when they're listed all together, and of course some get cut off.
What I meant to say was "exclude" the default pages you start with, but I had trouble logging in. With that module, and the query I suggested, I would have thought that was most of it. However, there's no page that actually ends in HTML. I guess it's all dynamically generated by PHP, but it's still … A little foreign to me.
So maybe this is common knowledge among Wikidotians. But I'm psyched about this new feature.
I've set up my front page to randomly select an image and and its caption. I've loaded each image/caption to its own page in a "photos" category. Then the ListPages module does the rest.
[[module ListPages category="photos" limit="1" order="random"]]
%%content%%
[[/module]]
Very slick. Thanks to Michal, Squark, Gabrys — whoever took the time to put this in place.
S.
Someone's been reading the changelog again…
I haven't been watching it myself, so thanks for posting. =)
just implemented something similar on my wiki front page to select a random page and display its accompanying thumbnail pic. very cool :)