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?
Thanks for the rotating header image code. It works great when the images are all jpgs:)
Randa, I couldn’t agree more! Fresh content is critical to attracting new visitors and keeping your web site in Google’s listings.
I’ve used banner rotators before to great effect. Nowadays I’m a fan of pulling some content feeds onto my website from other sources (so you pretty much always have something fresh for the users).
One example is taking Twitter content and dynamically placing this on your site.
Thanks for your useful tips and especially for the rotating header image code. I’ll certainly try it.
Hi there,
Nice article, some good and handy stuff. The rotating header is a nice thought.
Cheers,
Eddie Gear
Thanks for the info, I’ve never really heard too much about this before. This could be distracting from the actual content, it would seem.
Only too happy to help out with a plugin or similar – which, as I recall, was in response to some help you gave me. Thanks for pointing out all of these rotating tools. I doubt they would cause a distraction from the content, as they don’t make anything refresh in real time (such as a javascript or Flash slideshow does).
nice plugin there. my webs just got better and better. at first i got problem with it only to find that it work perfectly with jpeg files. I even upgraded my computer because i thought that’s where the problem came from.
I have gone through the articles on using the fresh content. And never came across the rotating one.. Thanks for useful stuff
[...] Keep your site looking fresh with rotating content (via @randaclay) (tags: design rotating) [...]
rotating headers are interesting and great looking. But from practical point of view it seems that theyjust distract visitor from what you want him to do. Any page has to have purpose. Headers are most expensive real estate so one need to thing twice before making it rotating
Excellent!
Some great stuff here!
Need to try these out for sure.
Thanks for the link to the rotating sidebar script. I have been looking for a decent one for quite sometime.
I totally agree, fresh content is vital for repeat visitors, and search engines… I sometimes put news on my website which is featured automatically from a third party such as Yahoo. It would be useful as a Wordpress plugin though… Not sure I’ve seen that anywhere..?
Thanks for the rotating sidebar script. It’s a great solution and i’m gonna use it for my blog.
keep up this great blog
Hi,
This tip will work well with entertainment blogs I believe.Personally I don’t prefer a rotating image for header/side bar.And I may prefer flickr photo gallery over this.
Those scripts are nice. I can use for my new theme I am currently developing. Thanks
It sounds like a great idea, and the scripts are truly amazing as well! Hopefully, the readers don’t get dizzy with the rotating contents…
Thanks for this information. I was especially interested in the plug in to rotate your posts.
Actually most of my traffic is from the search engines and they constantly take people to different old posts.I don’t have many poeple who read my blog regularly, but I’m getting between 200 and 300 people a day to old posts.
Great scripts. I just installed them on one of my sites, and they work like a charm
I just started with wordpress and I’m still not sure which plugins are best to use with my site. I’ll continue to visit your site for the great tips. Keep up the good work.
Thank you for the great post. I’ll try it ASAP. Keep up spreading knowledge & love…
Great tips, thanks for sharing.
Gorgeous!!!!i just love your concept….I will use this tips in my work…..thanks for sharing…….
Gorgeous!!!!THIS BLOG IS SIMPLY AMAZING……..I WILL USE THIS CONCEPT IN MY WORK………..
I didn’t think about rotating contents before. Nice idea.
Nice script. I’ll be utilizing this on my blog for sure.
Thanks for all the great advice in this article and others. I’m fairly new to blogging and the contradictory advice out there is pretty overwhelming – I’m glad to have stumbled across your blog!
Basic yet effective. Good information thank you.
This is great info, I plan to bookmark and try them!
I will try tomorrow morning
good idea
thx Andrea