johanvandemerwe

Users that have the Genesis Theme Framework installed are already known with the Genesis Featured Page 
plugin. This extended version looks almost the same, but adds the possibility to add a thumbnail of your 
own choice. This can be any image in your media library.
To add a different image, just switch off the “Show featured image” and place the name of the image in 
the URL. To make it even easier, you just enter here the name of the image as in “take-this-picture.png”. 
The plugin makes sure that the selected format is taken from your media library.
Bonus:
With this plugin it is also possible to show the excerpt of an article (which is not in the original Genesis plugin). 
!important! For this to work you have to install the Page Excerpt Plugin by Jeremy Massel.
How to use the image URL:
without month/year in media permalinks:
/montepulciano.jpg
with/year in media permalinks:
/10/2014/montepulciano.jpg
So you use the image name + extension starting after the /uploads in the media permalink. 
Don’t use the show featured image and the Image URL at the same time. That will show the featured image set in the page.
You can find that plugin here: 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/page-excerpt/" rel="ugc">Link to Page Excerpt Plugin by Jeremy Massel (opens in new window)</a>

Genesis Featured Page Extended

Extends the Genesis Featured Page plugin. Show as thumbnail any image in your media library and show your page excerpt. Requires Genesis Framework.

Ron Rennick

marksabbath

Nathan Rice

StudioPress

This plugin allows you to create a simple responsive slider that displays the featured image, along with the title and excerpt from each post.
It includes options for the maximum dimensions of your slideshow, allows you to choose to display posts or pages, what category to pull from, and even the specific post IDs of the posts you want to display. It includes next/previous arrows and a pager along with the option to turn both on or off. Finally, you can place the slider into a widget area.
The slideshow is also responsive and will automatically adjust for the screen it is being displayed on.
Note: This plugin only supports Genesis child themes.
<h3>Child Theme Integration</h3>
To adjust the slider defaults for a child theme use a filter similiar to the following:
<pre><code>add_filter( 'genesis_responsive_slider_settings_defaults', 'my_child_theme_responsive_slider_defaults' );

function my_child_theme_responsive_slider_defaults( $defaults ) {
 $defaults = array(
 'post_type' => 'post',
 'posts_term' => '',
 'exclude_terms' => '',
 'include_exclude' => '',
 'post_id' => '',
 'posts_num' => 5,
 'posts_offset' => 0,
 'orderby' => 'date',
 'slideshow_timer' => 4000,
 'slideshow_delay' => 800,
 'slideshow_arrows' => 1,
 'slideshow_pager' => 1,
 'slideshow_loop' => 1,
 'slideshow_height' => 400,
 'slideshow_width' => 920,
 'slideshow_effect' => 'slide',
 'slideshow_excerpt_content' => 'excerpts',
 'slideshow_excerpt_content_limit' => 150,
 'slideshow_more_text' => '[Continue Reading]',
 'slideshow_excerpt_show' => 1,
 'slideshow_excerpt_width' => 50,
 'location_vertical' => 'bottom',
 'location_horizontal' => 'right',
 'slideshow_hide_mobile' => 1
 );
 return $defaults;
}
</code></pre>

Genesis Responsive Slider

This plugin allows you to create a simple responsive slider that displays the featured image, along with the title and excerpt from each post.

Genesis Featured Page Extended vs Genesis Responsive Slider