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.

jethin

This plugin creates a “Home Slideshow” options page under the “Settings” menu in the WordPress admin. Editors and admins can create and manage individual slides on this page. These slides can then be displayed as a dynamic slideshow on a site’s home page using the simple ‘[home_slideshow]’ shortcode. (<a href="http://s89693915.onlinehome.us/wp/" rel="nofollow ugc">View an example slideshow</a>)
The plugin supports one optional “options” shortcode attribute:
<pre><code>[home_slideshow options="timeout=5000"]
</code></pre>
options: This attribute can be used to override default slideshow options or set custom options. Attribute values use query string format, e.g.: ‘option1=value1&option2=value2’ etc. Option names are in standard Cycle2 format without ‘data-cycle-‘ prefix. <a href="http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle2/api/#options" rel="nofollow ugc">See the Cycle2 website</a> for documentation and supported options.
Notes
Slides include image (required) and optional title, subtitle and link.
Links and image size can be set when selecting image. (Full size images recommended.)
Slideshows and slides are 100% the width of their container. Upload images that are at least as wide as the slideshow you want them to appear in.
Default Display: Aspect ratio of slideshow image area is set by the first image; images appear at 100% width / height of the slide container; images will show scaling in slideshows that contain both horizontally and vertically aligned images.
Default CSS ids begin with “hss-“, Cycle2 classes with “cycle-“. Default slideshow id is “home-slideshow”. Default CSS styles were created using Twenty Thirteen theme — some theme CSS customization may be necessary for other themes.
Slideshows look and perform best if images are sized to desired slideshow container / aspect ratio.
This plugin uses <a href="http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle2/" rel="nofollow ugc">jQuery Cycle2</a>. Cycle2 may conflict with previous versions of Cycle if used on the same page.

Home Page Slideshow

Create a simple, lightweight, responsive slideshow for your site's home page.

Random Featured Post vs Home Page Slideshow