The power of showcasing content
Featured Content is a great way to let users highlight their most important posts. Our Theme Wranglers use it often on WordPress.com, but this awesomeness is available to all theme developers.
The concept is simple: each theme can determine where and how Featured Content is displayed. Then, right from their blog’s dashboard, users can specify a tag to determine which posts to showcase in the Featured Content area. Users can even specify how many posts they want to show, and decide if they want to hide the tag from post meta and tag clouds.
Featured Content in Action
If you’ve been following the development of the Twenty Fourteen theme, you’ve seen the prominent featured posts section on the front page. This area was created with Featured Content! The user specifies which posts they want to feature, and the theme does the rest of the work. Check it out here.
Another great example of Featured Content is the rotating header on the Superhero theme. In Superhero, Featured Content was coupled with Flexslider to create the beautiful post slider that you see at the top of the front page.
The possibilities really are endless. Photography themes can use Featured Content to display beautiful photos, and business sites can highlight their most important news and alerts. Best of all, users don’t have to worry about Custom Post Types or theme-specific categories or tags. They simply set a tag, and the theme handles the rest.
Add Featured Content in a snap
Adding Featured Content to your theme is a piece of cake. You can find all of the information you need to get started on the Featured Content support page.
Keep in mind that Featured Content is designed to spotlight content right on your theme’s homepage. If your theme includes a front-page.php file, that’s the only template file to which you’ll need to add the Featured Content area.
Do you have a great idea for Featured Content? Or have you done something cool with it on your own site? Let us know! We’d love to see how Featured Content is being used in the wild!
Jetpack 
Thanks for another great idea for keeping it fresh. One question: How often do you recommend changing up the featured content?
LikeLike
Howdy, Jann! Thanks for the feedback. It’s tough to say how often the Featured Content should be changed, as every site is different. It’s really up to the user to decide.
LikeLike
What are the advantages to using featured content over sticky posts?
LikeLike
Good question, Paul! Sticky posts are designed to keep posts at the top of the front page (#), whereas Featured Content is a little different. It allows theme authors to choose where and how the Featured Content is displayed. So, you might use sticky posts to keep an important announcement at the top of your blog page, and you might use Featured Content to create a post slider for your homepage. In addition to that, when using Featured Content, your front page will not be full of unnecessary sticky posts if you switch themes. I hope this helps clear things up!
LikeLike