Pick Giveaway Winner

Description

This plugin randomly selects a winner or winners from the comments of a giveaway post. It only lists the 100 most recent posts to reduce strain on your server. You can disqualify people who’ve entered more than once (determined by email), or reduce their entries to only one. The plugin uses MySQL’s random function RAND() to randomly select the winners directly from the database.

Screenshots

Installation

1. Upload the folder ‘pick-giveaway-winner’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
3. Go to Tools -> Pick Giveaway Winner.
4. Select the giveaway post from the drop-down menu.
5. Select how many winners you want.
6. Choose how to handle duplicate entries (determined by email).
7. Press the “Pick Winner!” button to randomly draw your winners.

FAQ

How are the winners randomly selected?

The plugin uses MySQL’s RAND() function to pick the winners directly from the database.

Why does it take so long to choose a winner?

The more comments your post has, the longer it will take to parse the data and determine a winner. Also, if you choose to “Discard multiple entries, but allow the entrant a single entry” the plugin has to do an additional database query to get your results, which takes more time. Be patient and your results will be returned as soon as possible.

This isn’t random! I ran the plugin twice in a row and got the same winner.

It may seem counterintuitive, but if you re-run the plugin on the same post and occasionally get the same winner, this proves that the plugin actually is random. For example, if you roll a dice several times you will eventually get the same number twice in a row. The same thing happens with the plugin. However, if you run the plugin several times in a row and keep getting the same winner, that could indicate a problem.

Why can I only run this plugin on the 100 most recent posts?

This is done to reduce strain on the server and avoid problems that occurred when people had more than a thousand posts. Most giveaways should be done by the time you’ve posted 100 more posts, so this shouldn’t cause problems for most people.

This is awesome! Can I send you money?

Sure! Go to my plugin page at https://www.makeworthymedia.com/plugins/ to donate.

Would you like to thank anyone?

Yes, I would! Thanks to Roni Noone at https://www.roninoone.com/ for beta testing this plugin.

Reviews

Wow…! It works right out of the box!

Jakours2 May 21, 2022

Thanks a lot for this plugin. It’s a must have to made a nice random draw. Easy to setup, it can’t be easier to use. I agree with Makeworthy Media, this plugin deserves a lot more reviews. So, a trick that could be interesting to set up is to see the scrolling of names. This way, we could record a video of the draw to allow those who commented to see how the draw unfolded. But hey, that’s just a suggestion! Thanks again!

Still runs with WP Version 5.7.2

YogieAnamCara June 13, 2021 1 reply

I don’t know why this plugin is not having more reviews. It does exactly what I was looking for. I need to draw users who commented on a specific blog post as a winner. You can even say how many comments should be drawn as a winner, I thought I need to run the draw three times, but I was more than happy to see that you can even select multiple winners. Beyond that the plugin lets you decide how to treat duplicate entries, from a ban of the user, to just ignore more than one entry up to allow all entries done. Excellent – nothing more I wanted or need. However, I fear that it will disappear from the repository as it received its last update three years ago!? What a pity that would be. The 1 star rating is absolutely unfair and should be deleted or ignored!!!

Great plugin

Lynn Hill February 16, 2018 1 reply

I’ve used this plugin for years. Works every time.

Works as described

Makeworthy Media September 3, 2016

Full disclosure: I am the plugin author. Someone just left a 1-star review because they misunderstood what the plugin is supposed to do. I thought I’d help balance out the average by leaving my own review. Just to be clear, this plugin randomly selects a comment from a post. It only works if you’re logged into Wordpress and go to Tools -> Pick Giveaway Winner. It does not insert anything into a post/page. It does not let you ask your visitors a question. I’m leaving a 5-star review because the plugin does what it says it does.

Waste of time!

zawordpress September 3, 2016 1 reply

No details on how to insert it into a post/page and no way to change/customise the question you want to ask.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

1.3

• Changed the way the dropdown list of posts is generated and limited it to the most recent 100 posts to avoid trouble people were having if they had more than a thousand posts.

1.1

• Removed wpdb::prepare() errors you might see when running the plugin in WordPress 3.5 and up.
• Added label tags to radio button options so you can select an option by clicking on the text next to it and not just directly on the radio button.
• Updated the FAQ to answer a frequent question about the randomness of the plugin.

1.0

• Original version of the plugin.