Option to feature custom post type on home page

Question

I am wondering what's the best way to give a user the option to feature a custom post type on the home page.

I have a Case Study custom post type and some of them need to be feautured on the home page. Ideally when creating the case study there would be like a checkbox labeled "Feature on home page". Once that is selected the home page will show the image, excerpt and a link to the full case study.

Answer 1

First, you'll want a quick way to toggle whether a post is featured or not. I wrote a plugin that does this:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featured-item-metabox/

but I feel like a total dork because I just discovered that this plugin was already doing that! http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featured-post

Ugh. Anyway, how you want to feature them on the home page will effect how you can query them.

From my plugin's usage docs this will get a list of all featured "portfolios". You can adapt the UL list to be whatever you'd like.

// 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();

And because I'm using transients to store the query, we'll need to update the transient any time you update a portfolio post.

// 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' );