How to: display a single "featured" post on top of blog page.

Hey folks, I’ve decided to write this brief post with an easy-to-understand explanation of how to get a single “featured” type of post to show on the front blog page only. I’m writing this because I was trying to figure out the easiest way to implement a “featured” post without too much code and especially without a plugin.

*Note: The “featured” post in this example is simply a normal post under a Featured category. What I came up with is something like this:

<?php if (is_home() && !is_paged()) : ?>

    <?php query_posts('cat=13&showposts=1'); // shows only one single Featured post ?>
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

        <div class="sticky" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">

            <h2>"><?php the_title(); ?></h2>

            <?php include('meta.php'); ?>

            <div class="entry">

                <?php the_excerpt(); ?>

                <div class="after-excerpt">
                    <?php if (has_tag()) { ?>
                        <div class="tags">
                            <img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/tag.jpg" alt="Tagged as:" />
                            <?php the_tags('', ', ', ''); ?>
                        </div>
                    <?php } ?>

                    <div class="read-more-link">Read More ?</div>
                    <br style="clear: both" />
              </div>

          </div>

      </div>
<?php endwhile; ?>

<?php endif; wp_reset_query(); ?>
<?php query_posts('cat=-13'); // excludes Featured posts ?>
<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<!-- do the rest of your normal post stuff here -->