How to Provide a “Random Post” Feature With Eleventy and PHP

Published on Jun 2, 2026, filed under development. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

Have you ever thought about providing a “random article” feature on your website?

And, are you using Eleventy on a PHP-enabled server?

Then this is for you, a quick way of providing a URL to return a random article.

1. Drop the URLs of Your Posts in a PHP File That Randomly Redirects to These URLs

Save the following where you need it (.njk), and adjust where you want to export the output (here: /random/index.php):

---
eleventyExcludeFromCollections: true
permalink: /random/index.php
---
<?php
$posts = [
{%- for post in collections.posts %}
{%- if post.url %}
  '{{ post.url | absoluteUrl(metadata.url) }}',
{%- endif %}
{%- endfor %}
];

header('Cache-Control: no-store');

if (!empty($posts)) {
  header('Location: ' . $posts[array_rand($posts)], true, 302);
} else {
  header('Location: https://meiert.com/', true, 302);
}
exit;

In brief, the file:

• makes sure not to be part of other Eleventy collections
• goes through your “posts” collection (change and tailor this where needed)
• (assumes you use Eleventy’s RSS plugin or rolled your own absoluteUrl filter)
• sets a Cache-Control header (more, as far as I know, shouldn’t be needed anymore)
• picks one URL to redirect to on request (or falls back to the homepage, here represented by metadata.url)

2. Link and Feature the Script

Not much more to see here—link your /random or how you’ve called it, and tell others about the feature!

_ If you want to see this in action, here are three examples: WebGlossary.info uses this solution to provide random terms, meiert.com—this site—gives you random articles of mine, and Haiku Haiku Love, an old heartbreak project where this is done just via PHP, returns random haiku!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies, including Google; I’m an open-source developer and a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG); and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also with respect to politics and philosophy. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my experiences and perspectives. (Please share feedback—interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)