Random Products on Front Page
Written By Gary on Apr 18 2008 · Comments (13) 
Almost daily, I see this question asked in the osCommerce Forum...
How can I have 9 random products showing in the the "New Products For..." box in the front page of my osCommerce site?
The answer is really, really simple - you need to change the SQL that selects the 9 products, like this;
Open up /includes/modules/new_products.php
Find:
PHP:
-
p.products_date_added desc
Change to:
PHP:
Upload the file and refresh your index page. You'll get 9 random products rather than the last 9 added/amended products. A better option in my opinion would be to add a "Featured Products" contribution, as I think that no customer wants to see Random Products.
I tried the script, but I still see the same old products that stay until I load something different. It made no difference. Not sure if I did something wrong.
I used Front Page.
Inaddition, my site is slower than molasses and I have been making lots of modifications and could use some help and or advise to improve the speed.
Thanks
Ron
Comment by Ron Wilmot — August 12, 2008 @ 7:55 am
Ron – never ever use a wusiwyg editor with oscommerce files. Try ultrapad or textpad or any other text editor…
Make sure that your site uses that particular module to show the new_products, and make sure that no other contribution is contaminating it (eg featured products).
For speeding up, it's a case of applying some code changes, making sure images are small, using 2 sizes of image if necessary, eliminatin html as much as possible. I wrote a short tutorial on it.
Comment by Gary — August 12, 2008 @ 8:30 am
How can change the: "New Products for June" on the front page?
Comment by Martin — June 30, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
includes/languages/english/index.php to change that text
Comment by Gary — July 1, 2009 @ 12:12 pm
Hello,
I tried to do it, but I can't find "p.products_date_added desc".
I do find "p.products_date_added desc limit" few times in that page.
And my frontpage shows 12 items.
I have osc 2.3.1.
Maybe that's why?
Comment by Alain — July 11, 2011 @ 7:46 am
It's ok, it works fine.
Thanks.
Comment by Alain — July 11, 2011 @ 7:53 am
There actually 12 items in the frontpage.
Is it possible to se more items on that page?
thank you.
Comment by Alain — July 13, 2011 @ 12:20 pm
This is a setting in your admin area. That is assuming the template has been correctly coded, which a lot of template are not!
Comment by Gary — July 13, 2011 @ 3:41 pm
I found it.
Thanks.
Comment by Alain — July 13, 2011 @ 5:37 pm
Hello,
regarding that, is it possible that products of only one category that I will choose will appear on the front page.
thank you.
Comment by Alain — July 15, 2011 @ 1:24 pm
Gary, the mysql-based rand() command is rather slow (for large databases), is it not?
I encountered this on a site I was working on for a friend: http://wanderr.com/jay/order-by-slow/2008/01/30/ – I used the join command, instead.
Comment by angela — July 17, 2011 @ 8:28 am
Hi Angela – yes, it can cause issues for larger databases. Instead of a simple 'rand()' you could try 'and rand()>0.9 order by rand()'
A simple rand(), if that is not quick enough, then you would need to optimise all parts of your osCommerce shop anyway.
Comment by Gary — July 21, 2011 @ 12:21 pm
Change the SQL code in the new_products module, to look for products from X category rather than new_products_category_id
Comment by Gary — July 21, 2011 @ 12:24 pm