A WordPress webmaster wanted a routine that would periodically take the oldest post and make it the newest post, showing up at the top of the home page. This would rotate articles through the system, recycling old material.

This was similar to something I was thinking of doing, so I did this one along the way.

See all of our WordPress Plugins

This routine checks to see if an article has been posted in the last week, and if not, it locates the oldest post and changes the timestamp to the current day and time.

The interval is initially set at 168 hours (one week); this means that every week, an old post will be rotated to the top of the list and stamped with the current time and day.

The interval may be changed to any number of hours that you prefer by editing the $hours variable. By setting this large enough, it could be a day, a number of days, or weeks, even a month. (A week would be 168 hours, a couple of weeks, 336, etc.) It’s up to you.

A rotation will not occur unless a page is loaded from your WordPress blog. So if you’re extremely low on traffic, the rotation will be delayed until you have a visitor.

You might not want to use this if the timestamp is a critical component of your website, as the routine will change the timestamp with each move.

Features

• Checks to see if an article has been posted in the prior period; if not, the oldest post is made fresh with a new timestamp.

• The method allows you to post new articles and they maintain new status. Old posts are made new only if there’s nothing new already.

• The default period is 168 hours, one week. This may be adjusted depending on your requirements.

• If the old post is over six months old, the pinging mechanism will be engaged, just as if you’d manually changed the timestamp and republished the post.

If this plugin is helpful, use it. If not, ignore it; I probably won’t be interested in upgrading it.

Instructions

1. Simply download and unzip it.

2. Edit the number of hours, if you want something other than 168.

3. Put it in your plugins directory.

4. Activate it.

Download

Version 1.1: Download

Version Log

Version 1.0: Initial release for WP 2.0.5.

Version 1.1: Changed to rotate an old post only if nothing new has been posted. Added ping routine for old posts older than six months. Changed default period to 168 hours.

Print|Email

Share this: