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 …

Bill Erickson

NOTE: This uses the old media gallery interface, and I have no plans to change this.
I use the WordPress Gallery a lot on websites I build. It’s a wonderful tool, but it’s hard to find. Instead of telling users “Click the first icon next to Upload/Insert, then click the gallery tab”, I created this simple plugin to display all the attached images in a metabox.
It’s also customizable for developers (see documentation).
<a href="https://github.com/billerickson/Gallery-Metabox/wiki" rel="nofollow ugc">Documentation</a>
No support will be provided by the developer

Gallery Metabox

After updating to WP v4.9 this plugin gave me a PHP error until I added an image and then deleted it. Something about an array expected. Needs attention.


Throws a PHP error

Displays all the post's attached images on the Edit screen.

Featured Item Metabox vs Gallery Metabox