Adding featured content to your website or blog is a great way to showcase specific posts. This guide will explore different methods for adding featured content.
In this guide
Featured content is a way to highlight specific posts on your blog or site. For example, in the Craftfully theme, there is a built-in featured content section on the home page. The demo specifically showcases posts about Halloween.
In block themes, like the Craftfully theme shown above, featured content is powered by the Query Loop block. The Query Loop block offers several options for filtering content. For the sake of simplicity, this guide will focus on using a tag to filter featured content.
Many classic themes (but not all) include a “Featured Content” setting to highlight specific posts in a special way. You can verify if your classic theme has a featured content section by visiting the Customizer. Look for a “Featured Content” menu item.
If your classic theme does not have a featured content section, consider switching to a block theme. Then, you can use the Site Editor to create one.
The first step is to set up the featured content that you want to show on your site.
To create a tag that you’ll use for your featured content, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Posts → Tags.
- Click the “Add New Tag” button.
- Give the tag a name (for example, name it “featured” so it’s easy to remember.)
- Optionally, add a description.
- Click the “Add” button to save the tag.
Next, you will tag some of your posts with the tag you created in the earlier step. Optionally, add a featured image to your posts, which will also be displayed in the featured content section.
To add the tag to your posts:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Posts.
- Click the “Add new post” button, or click the title of an existing post.
- Open the post settings sidebar.
- Find the Tags section.
- Using your keyboard, type your tag followed by a comma or the Enter key.
- When finished, click the “Save” or “Publish” button to apply the changes to that post.
Visit our Organize Posts with Tags guide for more detailed steps to add a tag to your content.
Optionally, you can add a featured image to your post. This creates a more visually appealing display for your featured content.
- At the top of the settings sidebar, under the page or post title, click on the “Set featured image” box. This box appears if an image is not already set.
- Choose an image from one of four options:
- Media Library (click “Add new” here to upload a new image)
- Your Phone
- Generate with Al
- Google Photos
- Pexels Free Photos
- Openverse
- Click the “Publish” or “Save” button to save your featured image.
Visit our Featured Images guide for more detailed steps to add featured images to your content.
The final step is to set your theme up to display the featured content.
To decide which section of this guide to follow, visit your dashboard and check under Appearance on the left side. If you see Editor, use the Site Editor section of this guide. Otherwise, use the Customizer instructions.
In a block theme, you will add the Query Loop block to the template where you want your featured content. To add and set up your featured content, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Appearance → Editor.
- Click Templates and select the template where you want your featured content.
- Insert a new, or edit an existing, Query Loop Block.
- Navigate to the Query Loop block’s sidebar settings.
When you select a block, you will find additional block settings in the right sidebar. If you do not see the sidebar, you may need to click the Settings icon in the top-right corner to bring up the settings. This icon looks like a square with two uneven columns:
- Under the Filters header in the sidebar, click the plus icon and make sure the taxonomies option is selected.
- Add the tag you created to the “Tags” section of the filters.
- Click the “Save” button to save your changes.
Anything you tag with the featured content tag will show up in the featured content section. Older posts will stop displaying in the featured content area when you publish new posts with the tag.
To add a new post to your featured content section, tag it with the tag you created in Step 1. To stop a post from showing up in your featured content area, remove the tag from that post.
You can also change the tag that the featured content section uses. In the Craftfully theme example we used before, the demo site shows Halloween content. You can change the tag to display another holiday or seasonal focus, for example. To change the tag, follow the same steps you used to display the featured content.
