Sticky posts! No, these aren’t the yellow variety that you have stuck all over your desk and computer screen. Making a blog post sticky in WordPress means that post will be featured prominently, no matter when it was published.

You can use this feature to put your best content at the top of the page. That way, when someone visits your site, the best articles are the first thing they see. We’ll show you how to set up sticky posts, and some cool tricks.

How WordPress Posts Work

First, let’s look at how a regular post works. By default, WordPress publishes the newest blog posts at the top of the page. So if you have an older post that you want to feature, how do you push it to the top?

Use sticky posts to stick whatever blog post you choose to the top of your blog’s homepage. For example, check out our blog homepage.

We put our best foot forward with sticky posts. If there’s a new post we want to highlight, or an evergreen article, we make it sticky. (Evergreen, or cornerstone, content is an article that is timeless. A good example of this is our guide to creating a website portfolio.)

How Sticky Posts Help Promote Your Content

Think about your readers. Whether they’re new or returning, you’re the authority they look to. By curating sticky posts, you’re giving them a list of top posts to read. This helps people get into your content without becoming overwhelmed by your post feed.

Once you draw them in with your best posts, they will be more likely to sign up for emails and read more posts. Because you gave them your best up front.

So you know the value. Let’s look at just how easy it is to set up.

Making a Blog Post Sticky

In your WordPress post editor, you have a sidebar to the right where you can manage publish settings.

From this panel, you can save, preview, schedule, or publish your post immediately. There’s one more feature–Visibility.

Here, you can set a post to sticky.

Setting a post to be sticky is a simple process.

1. Click Edit next to Visibility (as shown here).
2. Make sure the button for Public is selected, and click the checkbox for Stick this post to the front page.
3. Click OK when you’re done.
4. Next, depending on what you need, you can click Publish, Schedule, or Update. If your post is already published, and you want to stick it, you will click Update. If you’re post is unpublished, you can either Publish or Schedule it to show later.

WordPress Sticky Post Tricks

There’s more you can do with sticky posts by installing WordPress plugins.

1. Do you have a sticky post that you want to unstick on a certain date? There’s a plugin for that. Expire Sticky Posts adds a function that let’s you set an expiration date. After that date, the article will be removed from sticky posts.
2. Let’s say you want to have different sticky posts for each category page. (If you have different categories of content, it’s possible to pick the best articles and make them sticky). The Category Sticky Post plugin makes it easy to stick a post to the top of each category page you specify.
3. You also might want to reorder your posts, sticky or not. Using the Order Your Posts Manually plugin, you can sort your post order by dragging and dropping.

How Sticky Posts are Displayed

Depending on your WordPress theme, the way your sticky posts are displayed will vary. If you don’t like the way your posts stick, there are some options.

For those who want to customize their feed more, the Ultimate Sticky Posts widget will enable you to change the style. It has many features that expand on the basic sticky post functions of WordPress.

Show your best stuff at the top of your homepage, and gain more subscribers and readers. For more WordPress tips, check out the articles below!