This is a great mod!
A couple notes from my own implementation:
If you only want the above mod to appear on the homepage, use the following code in:
skin1/customer/home.tpl
Code:
{if $main eq "catalog" and $current_category.category eq ""}
{include file="modules/Recommended_products/recommends.tpl"}
{/if}
it seems that otherwise this will also appear on the categories (and perhaps some other) pages.
If you want to limit the number of random items that appear then you will want to use customer recommends.php. Personally, I created recommends_home.php and made the following modification:
open recommends_home.php
Code:
find:
ORDER BY RAND(NOW()+$rnd) LIMIT ".$config["Modules"]["number_of_recommends"]);
replace with:
ORDER BY RAND(NOW()+$rnd) LIMIT 20");
note: this appears twice on the page