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.

iNexi

Restricts posts displayed on the home page to a specified length of time. Posts displayed via widgets or on any other page (archives, etc.) are unaffected. Options are in Settings > Reading.

Random Featured Post vs Recent Posts Only