[davesphoto]

I have got it working but I am doing the random part in the SQL query. My random.php is now:

<? 
// the database query 
$query = "SELECT * FROM $sql_tbl[products],$sql_tbl[pricing] WHERE forsale='Y' AND avail>0 AND $sql_tbl[products].productid=$sql_tbl[pricing].productid ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 2 "; 


// give the product array to smarty to make it available sitewide. 
$randoms = func_query($query); 
$smarty->assign("randoms",$randoms); 
?> 

This seems easy enough to me, are there any drawbacks to doing it this way?

I also added the original featured products back into the random.tpl so now I can specify one or two perminant featured products (with the X-cart module) and have two random ones.

Any other sugestions? This seems too easy compared to other solutions .