Since it is a Saturday and I only spent a few hours at work today, I didn’t have a chance to do anything too fun or innovative which means I don’t have anything new to write about.  So instead I thought I would write a quick helpful tutorial on how to create randomly rotating images on refresh using some simple PHP.

The basic theory is to name each image using a number.  For example: image1.jpg, image2.jpg, and so on.  Each image should have a number in a consistent location in an ongoing series without skipping a number.  Once you have all your images, you can randomly display them using some very simple PHP.

Below is an example:

<?PHP
 
     //USE PHP RAND FUNCTION TO CREATE A RANDOM NUMBER
     $number = rand(1,7);
 
     //DISPLAY A RANDOM IMAGE IN RANGE image1.jpg - image7.jpg
     $output = "<img src=\"image{$number}.jpg\" alt=\"Image\" title=\"Image\" />";
 
     //OUTPUT THE IMAGE TO THE BROWSER
     echo($output);
 
?>

Soon I will show a more detailed example that shows how to switch images without consistent names.