Hi, I’m looking for a way to add a link (maybe in the header) to show a random post, preferably from a list of chosen categories. How would I achieve that? Thanks!

This is what Suggested Topics at the bottom does, if you don’t have any new/unread.

cool idea. this could help surface up older content.

An I'm feeling lucky button on search? [I'm Feeling Lucky]

More like a “random article” link on Wikipedia.

Correct! With the caveat that it tries to stay in the same category you are currently in, also we disallow any suggestions older than 1 year. That can be adjusted via site setting.

Can I build a “suggested topics” page then?

How do you envision it being different from “top”? https://meta.discourse.org/top

[image] Mittineague: How do you envision it being different from “top”? I don’t know. Page would display random topics, not top topics? Actually that’s not even what I asked first. What I would like to have is: “Random post” (link) – click → Discourse displays a random post from selected categories of the forum But since this is a discussion I’m glad to hear what the people have to say :slight_smile:

I think a link to a random topic would be doable. It would need to filter to public topics to avoid giving an “oops” page. I don’t know if it would be more efficient to generate te number, check to make sure it’s OK and if not try again. Or get all the OK numbers and then randomize using that. I’m thinking the first would be better, but that’s only a guess.

I think getting the topic count(distinct ids) from badge_posts would do for an idea of the ratio of OK to not OK when compared to the max(id) of the topics table.

Show random post?

Product Support

_vincent (Vincent) March 24, 2018, 10:50am 11

I’ll run tests with the data explorer. Coming up with the right request(s) might be a good start I think

Topic		Replies	Views
Category that loads random topics? Product Support	3	191	December 27, 2025
Suggested topics vs. Featured topics Feature suggested-topics	10	2365	January 12, 2017
Topic List Sort - Random Feature	2	703	June 10, 2023
Improve performance of Topic load - ORDER BY RANDOM Bug slow-sql	22	4748	March 1, 2015
Understanding suggested topics logic Using Discourse explanation , suggested-topics	2	1605	April 25, 2024

Show random post?

Related topics