Whether you’d like to re-share that delicious holiday recipe from a few years back, spotlight a can’t-miss promotion you’re running, or just revive something quirky from the archives, the Featured Post gadget is a simple way to show off the content that matters most.
This is a quick and easy way to highlight a specific post in your blog, that will be enjoyable or useful for your readers. I hope to use mine to provide useful advice, as "Read, and Learn" - once the Followers gadget has been updated, and is fully operational.
The Featured Post gadget is not at all difficult, to add to the blog.
It's right there, at the top of the main "Add a Gadget" list.
You have options to show the post title, and the first image in the post. And, you can change the gadget title.
And I changed the gadget title, to "Read, and Learn".
Right now, it is "An Important Update".
One interesting detail, that we should note. The feature is a "Featured Post" - and it appears above individual post pages, and above archive, label, main index pages (look up, and see for yourself), and static pages. Look at the bottom of my Topics index, for instance.
The title is "Featured Post". You can have one gadget per blog - and each gadget will feature one post. This focuses attention on one post. Note that you cannot do "Featured Page" - static pages are not supported.
Note also that you can select the "Featured Post" using a posts list - either all blog posts (with "All Labels" selected), or posts bearing a specific label (with a specific label selected).
I think that some ability to choose teaser content would be a useful addition to the gadget. Since we're going to manually choose a featured post, manually editing the teaser would not be too onerous an addition. Other than that, what's not to like?