Randomly Selecting the Initial Active Item in a Bootstrap Carousel

This method allows you to randomly change the initial position when displaying a large carousel in the hero area using Bootstrap.

<div id="hero-carousel" class="carousel slide" data-ride="carousel">
  <div class="carousel-inner" role="listbox">
    <div class="item">
      <img src="..." alt="..." />
    </div>
    <div class="item">
      <img src="..." alt="..." />
    </div>

Assuming you have a large carousel like this, typically you would set one of the <div class="item"> elements to <div class="item active">.

To make one active randomly, you can use the following code:

<script src="js/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<script>
$(function () {
var items = $('.carousel-inner .item');
var index = Math.floor(Math.random() * items.length);
items.eq(index).addClass('active');
});
</script>

With this approach, you can use jQuery to select one item and add the 'active' class to it. This will work even after loading bootstrap.js. Clever.