Question

I have a list of articles that have increasing ids associated with them. Some ids are missing because the articles were deleted so the order is going up, but not always incremented by 1.

I am trying to dynamically recommend content like related articles but don’t always want to recommend the same articles, but want to make sure that

1) Every article is recommended in another article
2) A page always recommends the same article - so randomness algorithms do not help.

Is there a good way to do this?

Thanks!!

Answer 1

In your sql think like this.
-Select List of catagorically alike stories that match some key
-grab a random 1

However the only way to ENSURE every article is attached to another is to set up a key list. Make the key list hold every article on the left, and random input for other articles on the right categorically again of course. Make this a temp table so when you add articles the left side increments, and the right side re-randoms the related articles, while using everyone in the list.