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Jeff Chandler

Do You Use The Sticky Posts Feature in WordPress?

Sticky posts, introduced in WordPress 2.7, gives authors the ability to stick or feature posts to the front page. You’ll find the option in the publish meta box under the visibility section.

Where to find the Sticky Post option
Where to find the Sticky Post option

I’ve rarely found a use for sticky posts on my personal site and WP Tavern. However, I realize that in some WordPress themes, they’re an easy way to feature content. How many of you actively use sticky posts and if you do, tell us how in the comments. Creative uses may be featured in an upcoming article.

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28 responses to “Do You Use The Sticky Posts Feature in WordPress?”

  5. I had demonstrated to clients how to use sticky posts previously on projects– however I found that website owners were using multiple sticky posts simultaneously and I felt it started to defeat the purpose to highlight a “special” feature.

    More recently, for projects where conductor plugin is already activated to control multiple display areas, I find that it is easier to single out a post and show it in the top of the page or area of posts with a different format than the remaining ones. Serves a similar purpose.

    I look forward to reading your upcoming article about creatively using the sticky post option.

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  6. Never used it Jeff however…
    “I’ve rarely found a use for sticky posts on my personal site and WP Tavern. However, I realize that in some WordPress themes, they’re an easy way to feature content. ”

    May be worth using it for my #1, bestest ever, super dooper post.

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  7. I used to use sticky posts on my scifi podcasts and news sites almost all the time prior to 2009. After I switched those sites to magazine style themes, then later magazine styles with widgetized front pages, it eliminated the need for a sticky post, since a featured posts widget does the same, if not a little bit better.

    I don’t think I’ve used the sticky feature at all since then.

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  8. It’s a really handy feature for directory site. Like a shopping centre or something. If you need to feature a number of stores that are anchor tenants of the location and then list the rest alphabetically. The sticky post is an easy way to accomplish this.

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  10. I don’t use them routinely on my own sites, but have used them on various client sites, and on the East Bay WP Meetup site, when that was the way the theme specified the display of featured content, or when a client wanted a notice displayed at the top of the blog. (There are better ways to do that now, but I’ve been building WP sites for a long time.) I think it’s a useful function and doesn’t get in the way of people who aren’t using it.

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  11. I’m using Sticky Posts on a current project to allow my client to “feature” a post for each category since they have content that remains essential for longer periods of time. I’m using the Category Sticky Post plugin here: https://tommcfarlin.com/category-sticky-post/ and it seems to work well, allowing for sticky designation within the Post and for the category at the same time. Only shortcoming is the lack of ability to make the post sticky for multiple categories at the same time.

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      • Some themes, like Make, have adopted this implementation of the “sticky” concept. Make however labels “sticky” posts as “Featured” by default in the screen output unless you change that in its settings. This points to the underlying confusion of having “sticky” named in the core but themes determine how it’s implemented so there’s not necessarily any consistentcy between the front and backend UIs. This tends to confuse anyone who doesn’t know what’s going on below those surfaces.

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  15. I don’t personally use them on my own blogs. However, I do manage a few sites where others use them for simply putting their “important” stories at the top of the blog page. Sticky blog posts seem to come in handy more often when you have news-style sites where there’s a regular flow of new articles that might push an important one out of the spotlight.

    Now, I do utilize sticky topics in my forums quite a bit for the same reason. It’s not exactly the same WP feature, but the concept is the same. I think “stickies” are more dependent on the type of content a site uses. The more likely an important “post” gets pushed down from the top, the more likely one would use some sort of sticky feature.

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  16. Yes, I use them on TrueSchool.me. It’s basically a straight blog with whatever creative work I’ve posted (photos, songs, design projects) at the top. I use a sticky post as a pseudo-landing page to introduce the blog so people know what they’re looking at right when they arrive.

    I also used to use them with the Path theme on my main blog, TedCurran.net, because that theme would automatically make a featured carousel out of all the posts marked “sticky”. I have a different theme now, so it’s not up there anymore.

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  17. Featured Content was introduced to get around the fact that Sticky Posts in their current incarnation are a nightmare to work with. I’ve found featured content does a better job of handling “sticky” content than Sticky posts, as it supports both posts and pages. (You don’t really need Jetpack for this; look inside of Twenty Fourteen). That said, sticky posts can be useful for important and timely announcements, but they aren’t something I would ever be sad to see taken away or redone in a way that makes sense to how people use them today. They can mess with custom queries, also, which is enough to make me avoid them.

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  19. I’ve only ever used the sticky feature for one site which I built on WP.com four or five years ago. The organization wanted an introduction on the blog page, similar to category descriptions. Without a widget area above the content area, the easiest solution was to use the sticky post function to display the intro info. We backdated the post to be the very first one so it wouldn’t be prominent in the archives, published the post without a title so it wouldn’t be linked from excerpts, and removed the read more link from the excerpt so it would appear as a simple intro rather than a post on the blog page (I believe it was just hidden with CSS). It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it worked well at the time…

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  20. I use sticky post on clients’ sites regularly, to keep a major / urgent / vital information at the top while still posting other stuff (including featured) without playing shenanigans with publish dates or featured articles/sliders, etc.
    My clients need and use it regularly.
    It can also be used for reminders. About half the time, I use it with the “aside” post format or an equivalent.
    I’d miss that feature a lot if it were to disappear. To me it’s absolutely not the same thing or function as the “featured” posts. Two functions, different uses.

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  21. Many of my clients use sticky posts. They are also used, as probably mentioned, by many Themes to add posts to sliders and featured areas of a WordPress Theme, something I’ve found easier than dealing with a custom category that you have to remember to exclude from Category widgets and other listings and menus.

    Sticky posts are also a great way to easily create a hybrid or integrated site model with WordPress, adding a static area to the top of the front page with the posts scrolling underneath.

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  22. If you are blogging most often and you have a product, then I believe announcements posts goes sticky. That is a common practice I have seen in my organization’s content department. Posts stay sticky till the campaign remains.

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