Blog Master G

For some reason, I’ve been really into revamping my sidebar lately.

The latest addition: Random photos now appear at the top of the sidebar throughout my site. Leveraging my existing random entries script and the thumbnail photos already in my photos section, I created a new table in my database and threw together the following PHP template, which you can also see in stand-alone version:

<?php
include(“CONNECT_TO_DATABASE”);
?>

<div id=”random_photos”>

<div class=”sidetitle”>
From <a href=”http://gabeanderson.com/photos/”>Photos</a>
</div>

<div class=”side”>
<p>
<?php
$sql = “SELECT URL, imgSrc
from photos
order by RAND() LIMIT 1”;
$result = mysql_query($sql);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
printf(“<a href=\”%s\”>%s</a>”,
$row[“URL”],$row[“imgSrc”]);
}
?>
</p>
</div>

What do you think of this feature? Is it too much? Does it make the sidebar too cluttered? I really like it (at least I think I do). It makes the site a bit more interesting and personal.

Next up: I’ll throw more photos into the table. There are only 18 right now, which map to the number of photo albums to which I’m currently linking in my photos section. You’ll notice that clicking on each photo that appears in the random photo feature will take you to the corresponding album. So if I want more random photos and want to maintain consistency in linking to related albums, that means bringing more albums online.

Of course, the alternative would be simply to throw in a bunch of thumbnails and not necessarily worry about making every one link to an album.

Suggestions?