I found I constantly needed a way for clients to mark a post as something they wanted to feature and I've never found sticky posts particularly inuitive and the UI is pretty hidden for new users. The simplest solution was a checkbox in prominently located metabox.<\/p>\n\n
Please note that this plugin, by itself, will not change how your posts are displayed. It just gives the UI to users and a meta key to theme developers to query for.<\/p>\n\n
This plugin simply adds a Multiple queries per page load can slow down your site so it is worthwhile to take advantage of the Transients API<\/a>, so an alternate usage would be:<\/p>\n\n Then to ensure that your featured posts list is updated, add a function to your theme's functions.php to delete the transient when a portfolio (in this example) post type is saved.<\/p>\n\n Simple queries should only need the Support is handled in the WordPress forums<\/a>. Please note that support is limited and does not cover any custom implementation of the plugin.<\/p>\n\n_featured<\/code> meta key to every post with a value of yes<\/code> for featured items and no<\/code> for everything else. Actual display of the featured items is entirely up to the theme developer, but an example ( place in your template where you'd like to display a list of featured \"Portfolios\") might be as follows:<\/p>\n\n\/\/ params for our query\n$args = array(\n 'post_type' => 'portfolio',\n 'posts_per_page' => 5,\n 'meta_key' => '_featured',\n 'meta_value' => 'yes'\n);\n\n\/\/ The Query\n$featured_portfolios = new WP_Query( $args );\n\n\/\/ The Loop\nif ( $featured_portfolios ) :\n\n echo '<ul class=\"featured\">';\n\n while ( $featured_portfolios->have_posts() ) :\n $featured_portfolios->the_post();\n echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '<\/li>';\n endwhile;\n\n echo '<\/ul>';\n\nelse :\n\n echo 'No featured portfolios found.';\n\nendif;\n\n\/* Restore original Post Data\n * NB: Because we are using new WP_Query we aren't stomping on the\n * original $wp_query and it does not need to be reset.\n*\/\nwp_reset_postdata();\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\/\/ Get any existing copy of our transient data\nif ( false === ( $featured_portfolios = get_transient( 'featured_portfolios' ) ) ) {\n \/\/ It wasn't there, so regenerate the data and save the transient\n\n \/\/ params for our query\n $args = array(\n 'post_type' => 'portfolio',\n 'posts_per_page' => 5,\n 'meta_key' => '_featured',\n 'meta_value' => 'yes'\n );\n\n \/\/ The Query\n $featured_portfolios = new WP_Query( $args );\n\n \/\/ store the transient\n set_transient( 'featured_portfolios', $featured_portfolios );\n\n}\n\n\/\/ Use the data like you would have normally...\n\n\/\/ The Loop\nif ( $featured_portfolios ) :\n\n echo '<ul class=\"featured\">';\n\n while ( $featured_portfolios->have_posts() ) :\n $featured_portfolios->the_post();\n echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '<\/li>';\n endwhile;\n\n echo '<\/ul>';\n\nelse :\n\n echo 'No featured portfolios found.';\n\nendif;\n\n\/* Restore original Post Data\n * NB: Because we are using new WP_Query we aren't stomping on the\n * original $wp_query and it does not need to be reset.\n*\/\nwp_reset_postdata();\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\/\/ Create a function to delete our transient when a portfolio post is saved\nfunction save_post_delete_featured_transient( $post_id ) {\n if ( 'portfolio' == get_post_type( $post_id ) )\n delete_transient( 'featured_portfolios' );\n}\n\/\/ Add the function to the save_post hook so it runs when posts are saved\nadd_action( 'save_post', 'save_post_delete_featured_transient' );\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\nmeta_key<\/code> and meta_value<\/code> parameters, but if you need something more advanced then you might want to read about how to use the more complex Meta Query parameters<\/a>.<\/p>\n\nSupport<\/h4>\n\n