Random pics on index from only one category?

[ppostuser]

OK another contest related question...

I'm opening and closing contests on a deadline. I want the pics from the open contest category ONLY to appear on the index page with the random sort option. NOT pics from expired contest cats. It seems that currently the random feature for index page pulls random images from the entire board -- I just want it pull from specific categories which I specify.

How hard to do this?

I imagine you could archive contests in hidden folders -- that would make them drop out of the pool of random possibilities? but that's drastic. I want the archived contests to be viewable.

I know one solution would be to use "latest" sorting instead of random for the index page. but that gives unfair attention to the latest pics especially if you close the contest to new entries for judging period then the latest pics are frozen permanently on the index page. plus if you have many entries you want them all to get equal face time on the index page: rotated randomly.

So it's a question of blocking unwanted cats so they don't qualify for random sorting -- or specifying a single cat.

If this is an elaborate mod could you ballpark hours an expert would need to do it?

Thanks again

[Chuck S]

Just open pp-inc.php and modify the query to only pull from the cat your want in the function display_gallery.

Add a clause like WHERE cat='SOMECATNUMBER' into the query phrase