One great way to give visitors something new to see each time they visit your site, especially if you don’t post as often as you’d like, is to put in some rotating elements. There are tons of great plugins available for WordPress and other bits of simple code that make it easy to jazz things up a bit on your site.
Rotating Headers
Simple code solution:
Put the below bit of code where in the header file where the header image is called. Then put your header images in your themes images folder and be sure they’re named header1, header2, header3, etc… Obviously you’ll need to change the file extension if you’re not using jpgs.
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/header_<?php echo(rand(1,3)); ?>.jpg" width="940" height="190" alt="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> random header image" title="<?php bloginfo('name'); ?> header" />
Plugin solution:
Image Rotator Plugin – this one has many more features than just the simple code above. With this plugin, the image rotates on a timed schedule vs. rotating each time the page reloads.
Rotating Quotes
Simple code solution:
Put the below bit of code where you’d like your rotating quotes to be, changing out the quotes to real ones of course. If you add in extra rows, be sure the comma is after the last one only. If your quote has an apostrophe, you’ll need to use the following format: didn\’t.
$myRandomQuotes=array(
'Quote number one here.',
'Quote number two here.',
'Quote number three here.',
);
echo $myRandomQuotes[rand(0,sizeof($myRandomQuotes)-1)];
?>
Plugin solution:
Quotes Collection– this plugin was recommended to me by my friend and fellow designer, Tracey Grady, and it has some great features including Ajax refresh, so that the quotes can rotate with or without a page reload.
Rotating Sidebar Images
Simple code solution:
There is an easy image rotator script on Matt Mullenweg’s site. Looks very simple to use.
Plugin solution:
NextGEN Gallery – I have not used this plugin but it looks awesome. It will put random images, rotating images, or even a slideshow wherever you like on your site. It is widgetized, can be styled via CSS and you can even upload a zip file of images to use with the plugin. Can’t wait to try this one.
Random Posts
If your blog has been around a while, you may feel that some of your best content has sort of gotten buried in the past. Using a random posts plugin is a great way to resurrect some of those great posts. There are multiple random posts plugins to choose from in the WordPress plugin directory.
Have you used any plugins for these purposes that you’d recommend?