MillPondFN

Thank you so much for responding. I read into both Join and Union and I don't think either of those will work for what I want to do. As I said before each section of the site is in a different table and each table has different column counts and data types and needs to be handled differently. For example the row for a classified will need to show price, location, and a link to the classifieds directory where a video will need to have the code to show the video. I was looking for something that would return all info from 1 random row in tables x,y, and z and then if from table x print this, if table y print this, ect..... Does that make sense?

I hope this isn't a stupid question. I have written a fairly large site using php and SQL. The site has multiple features (how tos, classifieds, photos, videos, ect) with each section's data housed in its own table. Now I would like to have one highlight from each section appear in boxes on the index page simutaniously. (basically returning one random item from each table when the page is loaded) I know how to call each table individually with sql = mysql_query, however, I fear that calling the database that many times over and over in one page load could be problematic if the site begins to get a lot of traffic. Am I correct in worring about overloading the server and is there a better way to do this?