Random Results

[kkmarch7]

Hi!

Is there any way to have the search results populate randomly?

Thank you for your time.

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi!

Do you mean random results order, or the user types in something and just random results should appear?

There is no setting for either, but if you let me know I might be able to suggest something.

[kkmarch7]

Hi Ernest,

I would like the order of the results to be random. Do you have a suggestion on how I could make this happen?

Thank you for your time.

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi!

Only with a minor modification to the code, there is not other way unfortunately.

If you open up the wp-content/plugins/ajax-search-pro/includes/search/search_content.class.php file and scroll down to line 607, where you should see this:

[code]ORDER BY priority DESC, relevance DESC, " . $wpdb->posts . "." . $orderby . "[/code]

change that line to:

[code]ORDER BY RAND()[/code]

That should do it.

Please not that this solution is not update-proof, so once you update, you need to do this again. Also, make sure to do tests with a few phrases, random ordering might be a resource-heavy operation in some cases.

[kkmarch7]

Hi Ernest

I was wondering if I understood your suggestion correctly.

Line 607 is as follows
} else if ($orderby == ‘post_date ASC’) {

Do I replace it with the following?
} else if ($orderby == ORDER BY RAND() {

Thank you for your time.

[Ernest Marcinko]

Oh, you are using a different version than what I’m looking at and I forgot about the secondary ordering as well.

For the correct solution, first find line 602:

[code]if (count($all_pageposts) > 0) {[/code]

and replace it with this negative statement:

[code]if (0) {[/code]

So it becomes inactive. Then the go to line 384:

[code]ORDER BY priority DESC, relevance DESC, " . $wpdb->posts . "." . $orderby . "[/code]

and change that to:

[code]ORDER BY RAND()[/code]

If I’m correct, this should work 🙂

[kkmarch7]

Thank you this worked!

[Author]

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