HelgaTheViking

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.
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.
<h4>Usage</h4>
This plugin simply adds a <code>_featured</code> meta key to every post with a value of <code>yes</code> for featured items and <code>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:
<pre><code>// params for our query
$args = array(
 'post_type' => 'portfolio',
 'posts_per_page' => 5,
 'meta_key' => '_featured',
 'meta_value' => 'yes'
);

// The Query
$featured_portfolios = new WP_Query( $args );

// The Loop
if ( $featured_portfolios ) :

 echo '<ul class="featured">';

 while ( $featured_portfolios->have_posts() ) :
 $featured_portfolios->the_post();
 echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
 endwhile;

 echo '</ul>';

else :

 echo 'No featured portfolios found.';

endif;

/* Restore original Post Data
 * NB: Because we are using new WP_Query we aren't stomping on the
 * original $wp_query and it does not need to be reset.
*/
wp_reset_postdata();
</code></pre>
Multiple queries per page load can slow down your site so it is worthwhile to take advantage of the <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Transients_API" rel="nofollow ugc">Transients API</a>, so an alternate usage would be:
<pre><code>// Get any existing copy of our transient data
if ( false === ( $featured_portfolios = get_transient( 'featured_portfolios' ) ) ) {
 // It wasn't there, so regenerate the data and save the transient

 // params for our query
 $args = array(
 'post_type' => 'portfolio',
 'posts_per_page' => 5,
 'meta_key' => '_featured',
 'meta_value' => 'yes'
 );

 // The Query
 $featured_portfolios = new WP_Query( $args );

 // store the transient
 set_transient( 'featured_portfolios', $featured_portfolios );

}

// Use the data like you would have normally...

// The Loop
if ( $featured_portfolios ) :

 echo '<ul class="featured">';

 while ( $featured_portfolios->have_posts() ) :
 $featured_portfolios->the_post();
 echo '<li>' . get_the_title() . '</li>';
 endwhile;

 echo '</ul>';

else :

 echo 'No featured portfolios found.';

endif;

/* Restore original Post Data
 * NB: Because we are using new WP_Query we aren't stomping on the
 * original $wp_query and it does not need to be reset.
*/
wp_reset_postdata();
</code></pre>
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.
<pre><code>// Create a function to delete our transient when a portfolio post is saved
function save_post_delete_featured_transient( $post_id ) {
 if ( 'portfolio' == get_post_type( $post_id ) )
 delete_transient( 'featured_portfolios' );
}
// Add the function to the save_post hook so it runs when posts are saved
add_action( 'save_post', 'save_post_delete_featured_transient' );
</code></pre>
Simple queries should only need the <code>meta_key</code> and <code>meta_value</code> parameters, but if you need something more advanced then you might want to read about how to use the more <a href="http://scribu.net/wordpress/advanced-metadata-queries.html" rel="nofollow ugc">complex Meta Query parameters</a>.
<h4>Support</h4>
Support is handled in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/featured-item-metabox" rel="ugc">WordPress forums</a>. Please note that support is limited and does not cover any custom implementation of the plugin.
Please report any bugs, errors, warnings, code problems at <a href="https://github.com/helgatheviking/Featured-Item-Metabox/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">Github</a>

Featured Item Metabox

Quickly add a metabox to any post type for marking a post as featured.  Toggle featured status even more quickly from the posts lists/ quick edit scre …

yoren

Yoren Chang

Try it live in your browser — <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1fixdotio/categories-metabox-enhanced/master/blueprint/playground.blueprint.json" rel="nofollow ugc">launch the WordPress Playground demo</a>. Boots a WordPress instance with this plugin active, the Category taxonomy pre-configured as radio buttons, and seeded posts you can edit in the Block Editor or run through Quick Edit / Bulk Edit immediately.
Thanks to <a href="https://github.com/WebDevStudios/Taxonomy_Single_Term" rel="nofollow ugc">Taxonomy_Single_Term</a>, a library created by <a href="http://webdevstudios.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">WebDevStudios</a>, it made my work much easier on creating this plugin.
With Categories Metabox Enhanced, you can:
<ul>
<li>Change the built-in Categories metabox/panel to a single term UI, which means replacing the checkboxes with radio buttons or a select drop-down.</li>
<li>Apply the single term UI to other hierarchical taxonomies from the plugin’s Settings page.</li>
<li>Configure each hierarchical taxonomy independently — the same install can keep one taxonomy as checkboxes while another is forced to radio.</li>
<li>Customize the single term UI by setting these options:
<ul>
<li>Option type (checkbox, radio, or select).</li>
<li>Priority and position (context) of the metabox placement. Classic editor only.</li>
<li>Title of the metabox / Block Editor panel.</li>
<li>Whether child-terms should be indented.</li>
<li>Whether adding new terms from the metabox is enabled.</li>
<li>Whether a term selection is required (Force selection). When on, the classic metabox hides the “None” option, the Block Editor sidebar drops the “— Select —” entry once a term is chosen, and an empty save is substituted with a default term server-side so REST and programmatic callers can’t bypass it.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
The single-term invariant is enforced everywhere posts can be saved: the Classic Editor metabox, the Block Editor sidebar panel, Quick Edit, Bulk Edit, the REST API, WP-CLI, and any code that calls <code>wp_set_object_terms()</code> directly. The classic-editor and Block Editor surfaces enforce in the UI; everything else is enforced on the server via the <code>set_object_terms</code> action, which coerces multi-term submissions to the last term and substitutes the default term on empty submissions when Force selection is on.
The substituted default term resolves in this order: the <code>default_<taxonomy></code> option (e.g. <code>default_category</code>) → the <code>default_term_<taxonomy></code> option populated by <code>register_taxonomy()</code> <code>default_term</code> arg (WP 5.5+) → the first term ordered by name. Override per taxonomy with the <code>of_cme_force_selection_default_term</code> filter.
The Block Editor sidebar panel is rendered for taxonomies registered with <code>show_in_rest = true</code>. Hierarchical taxonomies that opt out of REST fall back to the Classic Editor metabox path.

Categories Metabox Enhanced

Replace the checkboxes with radio buttons or a select drop-down in the built-in Categories metabox and the Block Editor sidebar panel.

Featured Item Metabox vs Categories Metabox Enhanced