Random banner in Magento 1 using static blocks

The banners are an inevitable part of any E-Commerce store. They help to increase our sales by promoting new products, special offers & discounts etc.

Today I’m going to make a simple random banner in our Magento powered online store with static blocks and template files.

To add a random banner in Magento stores, first add few static blocks from administration panel (CMS->Static Blocks->Add new block).
When creating this static block, follow a common Identifier naming scheme for all these static block like
```
BannerIdentifier_1
BannerIdentifier_2
BannerIdentifier_3
BannerIdentifier_4
...
BannerIdentifier_N
```
Normally we use images as banner & so insert our banner image on each static block.
Then wrap that image using anchor tag that target our specific page, product or category like
```
<a href="http://mystore.com/my_new_product/"><img src="" alt="Some alt text"  /></a>
```
Now we just added an image link as our banner. But we have option to add text, buttons etc on that image with some CSS tricks & now that is purely off topic for me.

Then add a single line of code in our template file to echo a random static block.

<?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('BannerIdentifier_'.mt_rand(1, N))->toHtml() ?>

Here we use a PHP function, mt_rand() to achieve our goal. The mt_rand() return a random integer value between one and N because our parameters for mt_rand() function is one & N.

We use this returned integer value as a part of our static block identifier & echo that static block on that page.

To view our random banner, flesh the Magento cache and reload the store.

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If you found this article interesting, found errors, or just want to discuss about it, please get in touch.

Sarathlal N

Random banner in Magento 1 using static blocks

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