You can see that I have recently changed my theme and also included a Featured Post Section, It took a lot of time for me to get it working coz of my little knowledge in PHP but with some trial and error I was able get it working.

I’ll show you how to get your featured Post section in your blog.So lets get started

STEP 1 : Create a Category “Featured” for your blog.

STEP 2 : Create a file “featured.php” in the theme folder.

<?php $my_query = new WP_Query(‘category_name=Featured&showposts=1′);
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
$do_not_duplicate = $post->ID; ?>

<div id=”feature”>
<img src=”replace with featured post image.jpg“></img>
<h2 class=”post-title”>
<a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”<?php the_title(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a>
</h2>

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
<?php edit_post_link(__(‘Edit’), ”, ‘ | ‘); ?>
<?php comments_popup_link(__(‘No Comments’), __(‘1 Comment’), __(‘% Comments’)); ?> | <a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” title=”<?php the_title(); ?>”><?php _e(‘Read full story »’); ?></a>
</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

STEP 3 : Open ” index.php ”

Generally the first line would be the get_header(), if you want your Featured Post Section be right after the header , place this line right after that

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/welcome.php’); ?>

STEP 4 : Find this line

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post();?>

in the same index.php and place this next line right after the above line

<?php if( $post->ID == $do_not_duplicate ) continue; update_post_caches($posts); ?>

This does not allow the post to repeat itself in the regular posts below the featured posts thereby eliminating duplicates.

STEP 5: A bit of CSS , add this in your style.css

#feature{
width: 800px;
height: 132px;
float: left;
padding:20px 20px 20px 20px;
font-size:12px;
line-height:16px;
}

#feature img {

float: right; margin: 3px 5px 10px 0; backgroundr:#FFFFFF;

}

Hope this helps you get the Featured Posts up and running in your blog.

Another thing is that for the excerpt to be clean you need to explicitly  give an excerpt to the Excerpt Block in your Wordpress Advanced Options in the  Write Post Admin . The excerpt that you give in the excerpt is displayed on the Homepage.

NOTE : For the Featured post to work you need at least 1 post in your Featured Category.