Pulling out a feature profile

[textbox]

Hello, id like to pull out a feature profile on one of my pages, and allow it in the feature spot for 24 hours.

 

All i need pullling out is the users picture, headline, location and name which i am fine with.

 

I have no idea where to start on the feature part.

Any help would be great.

 

Nick

[trq]

Probably the easiest way would be to have a cronjob run every 24 hours pointing to a script which pulls a random profile id from your database and places it with a featured profile table.

 

Or is there some way you wish to choose these featured profiles ?

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Nope, can be totally automated and random.

Is a cron job the best way to do this?

Are they hard to do?!

 

Thanks Thorpe!

[trq]

Are they hard to do?!

 

Shouldn't be too hard, but Ive never used a server that I didn't have shell access too. Set up the script first, then take a look at your hosts instructions for setting up cron. Most users do it through cPanel or something.

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Yeah i have a cron job tab on my cPanel.

 

Should the script be something like

 

SELECt * FROM users ORDER RAND LIMIT 1
query to pull out info

[trq]

If you place another field in your existing users database (small int) you could simply use something like (not tested)....

 

<?php

  // connect to db.

  // remove current featured profile.
  $result = mysql_query("UPDATE users SET featured = 0 WHERE featured = 1;");
  // create new featured profile.
  $result = mysql_query("UPDATE users SET featured = 1 WHERE id = (SELECT RAND(id) FROM users LIMIT 1);");

?>

 

run through cron.

 

Then... on you page to display the featured profile you'd just need....

 

SELECT * FROM users WHERE featured = 1;