I was wondering, whether it would be possible to show something like a picture of the day (or whatever wobject of the day) on the first page which is picked randomly from all over the site. I already found the RandomProxy macro which is, however, not quite what I want.

I assume the macro (or wobject) that I am looking for should check in temp space whether an up-to-date picture exists, if not pick one randomly, create a shortcut in tempspace and then proxy it to the location where the macro is used. Does such a macro exist?

Apart from that it should prepare coffee, pick up the newspaper and massage my back. But maybe that is asked for too much in the first release.

If such a macro does not exist. How difficult would it be to implement? I have never written a perl app in my life. But I know Java and C++ quite well. Do I have a chance to get this done within reasonable time?

--- (Edited on 24.04.2008 07:26 [GMT+0200] by bernd) ---

Thanks for the hint! I got a bit further know. However, I am still not there. This is what I did:

1. Defined boolean meta data property "Picture Pool" with default value 0.
   
2. Enabled meta data in posts
   
3. Created shortcut to one thread within an image gallery.
4. Enabled shortcut by alternate criteria
5. Set criteria to "Picture Pool" = 1
6. Set property "Picture Pool" = 1 in a number of postings with pictures.

The main problem is that one needs to set the "Picture Pool" property manually to 1 in threads. But pictures are usually provided by users who are unaware of the shortcut.

I assume the default value field for meta data properties is evaluated as a perl expression? That means one could check whether the current wobject is a post with pictures attached and return 1 only then?

Alternatively, it would be nice to inherit meta data properties from the parent collaboration system (i.e. something like local default values). Can this be done somehow?

BTW, it was quite hard to find out how to create shortcuts. Why isn't the shortcut wobject part of the new content list?

--- (Edited on 25.04.2008 08:04 [GMT+0200] by bernd) ---

Yes, there is a way around. In order to get it to work one has to link to collaboration systems instead of threads. Afterwards, one needs to set the number of threads per page to one and override the template by a minimalistic one that only shows the thumb and maybe some text of the first thread.

However, two issues remain:

• Currently, it does not seem to be possible to display threads in random order. That is, always the same picture will be displayed from collaboration systems.
  
• I could not find out how to change the interval at which the shortcut alternates. Currently, it seems that the target of the shortcut changes every time the page is reloaded.

Any suggestions or solutions?

--- (Edited on 28.04.2008 07:20 [GMT+0200] by bernd) ---

I take it back. Now that I've read the rest of your post and see what you want to do, there is no way using the current feature set of WebGUI to do what you want to do. My suggestion to you is to use the new Photo Gallery asset to have people upload photos, and then write a custom macro that will display a random photo from your galleries.

--- (Edited on April 29, 2008 3:33 pm [GMT-0500] by JT) ---