How To Create A Featured Post Section In WordPress Without Any Plugins

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 because 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 . ‘/featured.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.

Similar Post  How To Show File Type Linked To In Your Posts In Wordpress

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.

19 comments

  1. Tech Updates Reply

    Wow this is just awesome 🙂 I will give a try for this one asap on my blog. Will need to take care about the coding changes i do on my theme because its already heavily customized!

  2. Silki Reply

    That is a cool application. There is a section on my theme, which shows featured post, but I never tried to understand the code behind it.
    Stumbling.

  3. Jonas Reply

    Hi!
    Great, just what I wanted.
    But what if I wanted 3 or 4 different featured posts sections? Perhaps one above the usual loop and one beneath it. Do I just copy and paste the code and changing the category name?

    Best regards
    Jonas

  4. WebVeins Reply

    I want the plugin to fetch the image from the post automatically.
    and at least five featured post must be there on the page.
    can you help me please.
    Thanks

  5. Shawn Reply

    shouldn’t it be featured.php instead of welcome.php on TEMPLATEPATH thing?

    • Avinash Post authorReply

      Your right Shawn, it should be featured.php thanks again.I’ve also corrected the post to the same.

  6. akasharora Reply

    Really Thank You for sharing such a useful tutorial. From many days I was searching for a easy tutorail for adding featured posts to my blog and today I found here on your blog 🙂

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