Hi all,

I have quite a few testimonials I would like to rotate. Each testimonial is just a block of text. As it stands, all are displayed on every page. I want only one to be displayed.

Currently:
I have about 20 pages that all have an include of "testimonials.php". Within this file, is all of the testimonials, in basic HTML.

The goal:
I would like to, in PHP, display a random testimonial on each page. I'd prefer to keep all content within testimonials.php.

The thought:
From my limited PHP experience, I was thinking I could assign each testimonial a $variable. ($test1="I love you...") and then randomly display each variable somehow. Possibly assign each variable a number, and use rand() to call up a random number.

Any thoughts / help?

Thanks,
Danny

Put each testimonial into an array eg


Ref: http://www.php.net/rand

If you decide to store the testimonials text in a MySQL database the method of getting the random row is totally different so let us know if you decide to go down that path.

Sarah

depending how how big your testimonials are, you could store them as variables and use a switch function .

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,5);
switch($var) {
case 1: echo 'Testimonial 1...'; break;
case 2: echo 'Testimonial 2...'; break;
case 3: echo 'Testimonial 3...'; break;
case 4: echo 'Testimonial 4...'; break;
case 5: echo 'Testimonial 5...'; break;
}
[/PHP]

Thanks for the replies. My testimonials are small paragraphs. (3 or four sentences)

Will the array method mentioned still work? Or is there a size limit?

If I did go with robbyd's code due to the size of the testimonials, would I simply echo $var?

Actually you would echo the text that you wanted to display

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,3);
switch($var) {
case 1: echo 'It was very good service'; break;
case 2: echo 'I loved it'; break;
case 3: echo 'Everything was great'; break;
}
[/PHP]

Or if the testitmonials are larger you could put each into a text file and include them...

[PHP]
$var = rand(1,3);
switch($var) {
case 1: include('testimonial1.txt'); break;
case 2: include('testimonial2.txt'); break;
case 3: include('testimonial3.txt'); break;
}
[/PHP]

Ah it makes sense. I'm going to try these two solutions out and see how well they work.

Thanks so much for all of your help.

Well I ended up going with the array. The only problem is, every 4-5 times it displays nothing (its just blank)

Is there a reason for this?

Thanks