Developing over 200 projects, we've discovered that some customers prefer to display certain items in a random order. For instance, some would like to display the categories list in a random order, rather than alphabetical or custom order.
Some other customers, would like to show say a 'most recent articles' widget, but to have it set to display 3 random articles from the most recent 10 ones published online.
Others are even more creative. They want to have a way to mark some articles as featured, and then display a widget called 'featured article' where to display a random article.
The configuration behind this feature we are proposing you is that assuming you want to display 3 random recent articles from the most recent 10 ones, your server will count which articles have been already displayed and when the next visit will occur (or when the current visitor will refresh the page) will make sure to display another 3 random articles but from the 10 - 3 = 7 articles that weren't displayed on the previous visit.
In other words, this facility is intelligent enough to make sure all the most recent 10 articles will be displayed, but they will be displayed in random blocks made of 3 items each.
You have full liberty to tell us what sort of items you would like to display in random order. The random facility allows you both to display the whole list but always with the items in a different order, or blocks of fewer items, but making sure that on each and every display the items not displayed will be show up online.
The sky is the limit here!