Plugins to achieve functionality of my current site

Hi,

I’m in the process of replacing my current website (rewardsforresearch.com) with a wordpress version. The main function of my site is to display medical trials (posts) by location (categories). I also show on the home page a list of all the locations (categories) as a means for navigating the site. I have 2 specific questions:

1. What is the best way to setup a category page that shows a small standardised excerpt of each page in that category (similar to rewardsforresearch.com/qld.php)?

2. Instead of showing the most recent posts for each category I would just like to flag each post as ‘current’ or ‘expired’, and have only the ‘current’ posts live, regardless of how many there are. Is there a plugin that does something like this?

Thanks very much,
Nick