how to randomly list 5 authors with at least 3 published posts

3 comments

1. You could use count_many_users_posts().

   $args = array(
       'exclude' => array( 4, ),
       'fields' => 'ID',
   );
   $users = get_users( $args );
   $user_posts = count_many_users_posts( $users );
   foreach( $user_posts as $user => $posts ) {
       if( $posts < 3 ) {
           unset( $user_posts[$user] );
       }
   }
   $user_ids = array_keys( $user_posts );
   shuffle( $user_ids );
   for( $i = 0; $i <=4; $i++ ) {
       $user = get_userdata( $user_ids[$i] );
       // display your user info here
   }
   

   Reference

   • count_many_users_posts()
   • get_users()
   • array_keys()

2. Basic Query

   The following query will give you the five users with the most posts in a site. Using the HAVING and COUNT will be much faster than other queries. Especially faster than built in multi purpose WP queries.

   global $wpdb;
   
   $postCountSQL = <<<SQL
       SELECT post_author, COUNT( * ) AS count
           FROM {$wpdb->posts}
       GROUP BY post_author
       HAVING COUNT( * ) > 3
       ORDER BY count DESC 
       LIMIT 0 , 5
   SQL;
   
   $postCount = $wpdb->get_results( $postCountSQL );
   

   Random results

   Now that you want to have them randomly. It’s actually quite easy using the MySQL function RAND():

   SELECT post_author, COUNT( * ) AS count
       FROM {$wpdb->posts}
   GROUP BY post_author
   HAVING COUNT( * ) > 3
   ORDER BY RAND() DESC
   LIMIT 0 , 5
   

   Excluding

   To exclude a specific user by ID, we can use the NOT statement:

   SELECT post_author, COUNT( * ) AS count
       FROM {$wpdb->posts}
   GROUP BY post_author
   HAVING COUNT( * ) > 3
       AND NOT post_author = {$id}
   ORDER BY RAND( ) DESC 
   LIMIT 0 , 5
   

   The Plugin

   To summon that in a small mu-plugin (so it is available per default on every site):

   <?php
   /**
    * Plugin Name: (#115930) Random User Post Count
    * Plugin URI:  http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/115930/how-to-randomly-list-5-authors-with-at-least-3-published-posts
    * Description: Lists five random users and their posts count. Can exclude users by ID.
    * Author:      Franz Josef Kaiser <wecodemore@gmail.com>
    * Author URI:  http://unserkaiser.com
    */
   defined( 'ABSPATH' ) OR exit;
   
   function wpse115930UserPostCountRand( $minCount = 3, $userIDs = array(), $limit = 5 )
   {
       ! is_array( $userIDs ) AND $userIDs = array( $userIDs );
   
       global $wpdb;
   
       $sql = <<<SQL
   SELECT post_author, COUNT( * ) AS count
       FROM {$wpdb->posts}
   GROUP BY post_author
   HAVING COUNT( * ) > %d %s
   ORDER BY RAND( ) DESC
   LIMIT 0 , %d
   SQL;
   
       $exclude = "";
       ! empty( $userIDs ) AND $exclude = $wpdb->prepare(
           " AND NOT post_author IN ( %s ) ",
           join( ",", $userIDs )
       );
   
       return $wpdb->get_results( $wpdb->prepare( $sql, $minCount, $exclude, $limit ) );
   }
   

   You can now simply call wpse115930UserPostCountRand( 3, array( 4 ), 5 ); anywhere in your templates to get the users who have a minimum of 5 posts, don’t have the ID of 4 and limit the result to 3 users. As you can see the second argument is an array, so expanding the results to exclude more users is easy. The same goes for a different amount of users or minimum posts.

   Caching results

   As already mentioned, you could use the Transients API. Another and maybe even better option would be to use the WP Object Cache in above plugin. In case some sort of persistent cache like OpCode or MEMcache is involved, it will cache it to disk as well.

   Have fun 🙂

3. I use this feature on many pages throughout my website and am worried it might be too db query intensive.

   On pretty much everything I do, if I don’t need “real-time” data, I use transients to cache my XML, JSON and Database calls. Check out the Transient API.

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