Advanced Random Posts
Advanced Random Posts Widget displays your posts by selecting randomly with thumbnail images (optional). It gets posts from selected categories or current category or all posts. When your visitors are at home, it gets…
Consider an alternative
Advanced Random Posts shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 200+ sites and was last updated 9 years ago, and scores 26/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (200+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 8 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 2.8 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Advanced Random Posts stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| category | >100 |
| category posts | >100 |
| posts | >100 |
| random | >100 |
| Random Posts | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Advanced Random Posts
From the official readme · v2.3Description
Advanced Random Posts Widget displays your posts by selecting randomly with thumbnail images (optional). It gets posts from selected categories or current category or all posts. When your visitors are at home, it gets posts from all posts or selected category. If you set ‘Get posts from current category’, when visitors see single post, widget lists posts in the same category of single post or when visitors click a category link, it gets posts from current category.
Notice: Version 2.2+ requires at least 2.8.
Supported Languages
- English
- Turkish
- Russian – Thanks Fatcow
Options
Widget’s options allow you to change your random posts list displaying.
Title:
Your random posts widget’s title on your sidebar.
Number of posts to show:
How many posts to display
Excerpt length (letters)
You know that
Thumbnail Custom Field Name
If you want to display the thumbnail of your posts via a custom field, write its name.
Height – Width
Images size.
Get first image of post
If you don’t want to use custom field, plugin will get first image from your post content.
Get first attached image of post
Plugin gets first attached image of post.
Default image
If post has no image, plugin display this image. Ex: http://www.yakupgovler.com/default-image.png
Notice: If you use three options, plugin uses custom field image firstly. If the post has no custom field, it gets first image from content. At last it gets first attached image. I suggest not to use “Get first image of post” for performance. It queries much more.
Categories
Plugin gets posts in these categories. (Category IDs, separated by commas.)
Get posts from current category:
Posts will be get from current category (single post’s category or current category).
Installation
Installation
- Make sure you are running WordPress version 2.8 or better. It won’t work with older versions. If you have older versions, please download v1.1
- Download the zip file and extract the contents.
- Upload the ‘advanced-random-posts’ folder (wp-content/plugins/).
- Activate the plugin through the ‘plugins’ page in WP.
- See ‘Appearance’->’Widgets’ to place it on your sidebar. Set the settings.
Changelog
2.3
- Fixed a bug. If you don’t set image dimensions, it displays thumbnail wrong.
2.2
- Added Russian language support
2.1
- Fixed a bug. When you check ‘Get posts from current category’ and you are in a single post, widget calls an error. Thanks E.Ali.
2.0
- Added thumbnail image support
- Added multi-language support
- Rewriten by using WordPress 2.8 Widget Class API
1.1
- Bug fixed, showing the same post id.
Version 1.0
- Initial release version.
Screenshots
For developers
Is this your plugin? Show off the numbers.
Add a live badge to your site, docs or GitHub README. It updates on its own — no account needed.
Best Advanced Random Posts alternatives
All category plugins →
FAQ
Advanced Random Posts: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 26, 2026
Is Advanced Random Posts free?
Yes. Advanced Random Posts is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Advanced Random Posts safe to use in 2026?
Advanced Random Posts shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 200+ sites and was last updated 9 years ago, and scores 26/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Advanced Random Posts?
Advanced Random Posts is active on 200+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 53,323 times since it launched in November 2008. It was downloaded 99 times in the last 30 days.
Does Advanced Random Posts work with WordPress 7.1?
Advanced Random Posts is officially tested up to WordPress 2.8.4, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Advanced Random Posts last updated?
The latest version, 2.3, was released on November 28, 2017 (9 years ago).
Who makes Advanced Random Posts?
Advanced Random Posts is developed and maintained by yakuphan.
What are the best alternatives to Advanced Random Posts?
The most popular alternatives to Advanced Random Posts are Pages with category and tag (50K+ installs), Search & Filter (50K+ installs) and Tag, Category, and Taxonomy… (40K+ installs).
Powered by PageForge
Want thousands of pages that rank like these? Build them in an afternoon.
This directory runs on the same engine as PageForge. Turn any spreadsheet, CSV or API into thousands of fast, SEO-ready WordPress pages — with schema, internal links and AI-written copy baked in.
- CSV, Google Sheets & API data sources
- AI content, schema & internal links per page
- Works with Elementor, Gutenberg, Yoast & Rank Math
- Free on WordPress.org — no credit card
