The Random Featured Post plugin allows you to display a random post from a designated category. Ideally this should 
draw readers landing on your homepage to some of your best posts. The featured post will display the title 
“Featured Post” (customizable) along with the post’s title, an excerpt and a link to continue to the full post.
<h3>Additional Notes</h3>
<ul>
<li>The show_featured_post($PreFeature = ”, $PostFeature = ”, $AlwaysShow = false, $categoryID = 0, $NumberOfPosts = 0) function has five optional arguments. 
The first two are for any HTML you would like to display before and after the featured post. The third argument is a 
boolean (true/false) argument which will override the \’Show Featured Post\’ option and always display the featured post when true. The fourth option allows you to 
specify a single category to display from, overriding the selections in settings page. The fifth option allows you to show more than one post at a time, overriding 
the settings page option.</li>
<li>All output is contained in a DIV class named “featuredpost” and can be adjusted via your stylesheet.</li>
</ul>

Random Featured Post

The Random Featured Post plugin allows you to display a random post from a designated category as a "featured" post.

seobiz

Plugin adds a widget that allows to display anounces of selected posts in a special blocks in the sidebar. Supports the display of thumbnails, custom fields, your own styles. Styles may be configured through a separate CSS file.
Widget options:
<ul>
<li>Category ID (the desired category ID)</li>
<li>Number of anounces (number of displaying anounces)</li>
<li>Number of chars (number of chars in one anounce)</li>
<li>With custom field (only for anounces with custom fields)</li>
<li>Special style</li>
<li>Show category (displaying or not the name of category)</li>
<li>Show thumbnail</li>
</ul>
To insert thumbnail in a block with the announcement, 
just add the appropriate post field ‘favpostimg’ (lowercase, without quotes) 
and set full path (URL) to image.
If you want display only favorites posts that you want, 
then add in the appropriate post any custom field with any value 
(value of custom field must be not empty) and set this field in widget options. 
In this case categories do not matter.
Add to sidebar so many widgets as you like and displaying through each 
widget only selected posts with appropriate custom fields.
If nothing set in widget options, then default settings is category 1, 
number of anounces 3, number of chars in each anounce 300.
For make your own style of special anounces blocks use css file ‘/favposts/favposts.css’.
List of css classes that you can change:
<ul>
<li>cat-design – style displaying of category</li>
<li>cat-nodesign – displaying category without special style</li>
<li>fav-title – style titles of posts</li>
<li>favblok-design – style displaying of anounce</li>
<li>favblok-nodesign – style displaying without special style</li>
<li>favimg – style displaying thumbnails in anounces</li>
</ul>

Favorites Posts

Plugin adds a widget that allows to display anounces of posts in a blocks in the sidebar. Supports thumbnails, custom fields, your own styles.

Random Featured Post vs Favorites Posts