Harsh J

This post is another small tutorial on how you can get random rotating images for your WordPress headers or even just random images simply.

An example :

Reload this page to see the images change below, you might need to force reload too (Usually Ctrl + F5)

Ok, now onto how you can achieve this…

First create a directory/folder on your PC of any name, I chose rotate.

Second, visit this site and get the random image code. Its by Matt (Yeah, the photomatt! or automattic!)

Here’s the code anyways:

[Start]

/*
By Matt Mullenweg > http://photomatt.net
Inspired by Dan Benjamin > http://hiveware.com/imagerotator.php
Latest version always at:

*/

// Make this the relative path to the images, like "../img" or "random/images/".
// If the images are in the same directory, leave it blank.
$folder = '';

// Space seperated list of extensions, you probably won't have to change this.
$exts = 'jpg jpeg png gif';

$files = array(); $i = -1; // Initialize some variables
if ('' == $folder) $folder = './';

$handle = opendir($folder);
$exts = explode(' ', $exts);
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
foreach($exts as $ext) { // for each extension check the extension
if (preg_match('/.'.$ext.'$/i', $file, $test)) { // faster than ereg, case insensitive
$files[] = $file; // it's good
++$i;
}
}
}
closedir($handle); // We're not using it anymore
mt_srand((double)microtime()*1000000); // seed for PHP < 4.2
$rand = mt_rand(0, $i); // $i was incremented as we went along

header('Location: '.$folder.$files[$rand]); // Voila!
?>

[End]

So copy this code and save it in a file called rotate.php (or any filename of your choice) inside the directory we made (rotate in my case).

Now place the images you want to see rotating randomly in the rotate folder.

Finally, upload this somewhere on your webhost or any web space. And now, to use the feature, use the code http://.com/rotate/rotate.php in any image tag to watch images rotate.

Example code, from Matt's site:

Thats it. Now to use it in the headers, if your theme supports a remote web image header, you can point it to your rotate.php address and it'll automatically resolve it as an image address.

Else, look under the CSS of your theme and search out the line for the header image. Replace the link there with your rotate.php address.

[ratings]

Ps. If you want to use my Spider-Man images, link the images to http://www.harshj.com/rotation-example/rotate.php