“Featured posts” on front page?

For example, 123 as the category ID set up for featured posts.

<?php
query_posts('posts_per_page=1&cat=123');
if(have_pots()) :
  the_post();
  ?>
  <div class="featured">
    <a href="<? the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title() ?></a>
    <div class="entry"><?php the_content(); ?></div>
  </div>
  <?php
endif;
wp_reset_query();
?>

If you want to use category name, change this:
query_posts('posts_per_page=1&cat=123')

to this:
query_posts('posts_per_page=1&category_name=Featured')
replace [Featured] with your category name.

Hey thanks! I’ll give this a try ….

@kz, thanks for this, I will try this on one of my blog.

If not mistaken, since there’s no while loop in the code above provided by kz, you don’t need to specify posts_per_page=1. Just a simple: query_posts('cat=123');. The query will stop at 1 post.

And also there’s a typo: if(have_pots()) : should be if(have_posts()) :

Correct me if I’m wrong ??

Could someone say where about in the home.php I insert the code as I’m doing trial and error ad getting no where.

<?php get_header() ?>

	<div id="container">
	    <div id="content">
			<div id="nav-above" class="navigation">
				<div class="nav-previous"><?php next_posts_link(__('<span class="meta-nav">&laquo;</span>', 'sandbox')) ?></div>
				<div class="nav-next"><?php previous_posts_link(__('<span class="meta-nav">&raquo;</span>', 'sandbox')) ?></div>
			</div>

<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>

			<div id="post-<?php the_ID() ?>" class="featured <?php sandbox_post_class() ?>">
				<div class="entry-date bigdate"><abbr class="published" title="<?php the_time('Y-m-d\TH:i:sO') ?>"><?php the_time('d M'); ?></abbr></div>
				<h2 class="entry-title post-content-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" title="<?php printf( __('Permalink to %s', 'sandbox'), the_title_attribute('echo=0') ) ?>" rel="bookmark"><span><?php the_title() ?></span></a></h2>
				<div class="entry-content post-content">
					<h4><?php the_title() ?></h4>
					<p><?php the_excerpt(); ?></p>

				<?php wp_link_pages('before=<div class="page-link">' . __( 'Pages:', 'sandbox' ) . '&after=</div>') ?>
				</div>
				<span class="attach-post-image" style="height:300px;display:block;background:url('<?php the_post_image_url('large'); ?>') center center repeat">&nbsp;</span>
			</div><!-- .post -->

<?php comments_template() ?>

<?php endwhile ?>

			<div id="nav-below" class="navigation">
				<div class="nav-previous"><?php next_posts_link(__('<span class="meta-nav">&laquo;</span> Older posts', 'sandbox')) ?></div>
				<div class="nav-next"><?php previous_posts_link(__('Newer posts <span class="meta-nav">&raquo;</span>', 'sandbox')) ?></div>
 			</div>

	  </div><!-- #content -->
</div>
	<!-- #container -->
<?php get_footer() ?>

I managed to sort it out by trial and error

line <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>

insert query_posts('posts_per_page=4&category_name=your_cat'); just prior to while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>

works a treat now, another job off my list.