HelgaTheViking

<p>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>
<p>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>
<h4>Usage</h4>
<p>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:</p>
<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>
<p>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:</p>
<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>
<p>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>
<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>
<p>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>.</p>
<h4>Support</h4>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Please report any bugs, errors, warnings, code problems at <a href="https://github.com/helgatheviking/Featured-Item-Metabox/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">Github</a></p>


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 …

Featured Item Metabox vs CubeWP Framework