Featured Product: When the store owner tries to increase the sale of a product, he needs to make the product as a featured product. So that the owner could able to do more publicity of those products.

Here I am describing how can you create a featured product and show the block in the home page of your Magento Store.

Following are the steps:

Step1:
Create a attribute “featured” with yes/no property from Catalog Input Type for Store Owner dropdown present in the Add new atrribute.
Include the featured attribute in the attribute set you want.

Step2:
Create a new product and add that particular atrribute set and set the featured attribute as “yes” from manage products.

Step3:
Create a extension module in your local folder and named it as featuredproduct.

Create block file “app/code/local/FeaturedProduct/Catalog/Block/Product/Featured.php”
Add the code below:

/Code will fetch all the products whose featured attribute is set to "Yes"
public function getFeaturedProducts()
    {
        $resource = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource');
        $read = $resource->getConnection('catalog_read');//Make a connection
        $productEntityIntTable = (string)Mage::getConfig()->getTablePrefix() . 'catalog_product_entity_int';
        $eavAttributeTable = $resource->getTableName('eav/attribute');// Get the attribute table
        $categoryProductTable = $resource->getTableName('catalog/category_product');//get the product table
         
        $select = $read->select()
        ->distinct(true)
        ->from(array('cp'=>$categoryProductTable), 'product_id')
        ->join(array('pei'=>$productEntityIntTable), 'pei.entity_id=cp.product_id', array())
        ->joinNatural(array('ea'=>$eavAttributeTable))
        ->where('pei.value=1')
        ->where('ea.attribute_code="featured"');
         
        $res = $read->fetchAll($select);
        return $res;
    }
 
Step6:
Create block file “app/code/local/FeaturedProduct/Catalog/Block/Category/View.php”
 
Add the following code:
 
public function getFeaturedProductHtml()
{
        return $this->getBlockHtml('product_featured');
}
 
Step5:
Create file “app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/featured.phtml”
 
Add the code:
 
<?php $featured_products = $this->getFeaturedProducts(); ?>
<?php shuffle($featured_products); ?>

<div class="box recently" style="padding-left:15px; padding-right:15px;">
    <h3><?php echo $this->__('Featured Products') ?></h3>
<div class="listing-type-grid  catalog-listing">

<?php $_collectionSize = count($featured_products) ?>

<table cellspacing="0" class="recently-list" id="product-list-table">

    <?php $i=0; foreach ($featured_products as $_res): ?>
    <?php $_product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($_res['product_id']); ?>
    <?php if ($i++%3 == 0): ?>
        <tr>
        <?php endif ?>
        <td>
            <div>
                <a href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>">
                <img class="product-image" src="<?php echo $this->helper('catalog/image')->init($_product, 'small_image')->resize(120, 120); ?>" width="120" height="120" alt="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>" />
                </a>
            </div>
           
            <p>
                <a class="product-name" href="<?php echo $_product->getProductUrl() ?>" title="<?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>)">
                <?php echo $this->htmlEscape($_product->getName()) ?>
                </a>
            </p>
           
            <?php echo $this->getReviewsSummaryHtml($_product, 'short') ?>
        </td>
       
        <?php if ($i%3 == 0 &amp&amp !=$_collectionSize): ?>
        </tr>
       
        <?php endif ?>
       
    <?php endforeach ?>
   
    <?php for($i;$i%3!=0;$i++): ?>
   
        <td class="empty-product">  </td>
    <?php endfor ?>
         
    <?php if ($i%3==0): ?>
         
    <?php endif ?>
</table>
<script type="text/javascript">decorateTable('product-list-table')</script>
</div>
</div>
 
Step6:
Create the “app/code/local/FeaturedProduct/etc/config.xml"
<block>
   <catalog>
            <rewrite>
                <product_featured>Mindfire_Featuredproduct_Block_Catalog_Product_Featured

</product_featured>
            </rewrite>
            <rewrite>
                <category_view>Mindfire_Featuredproduct_Block_Catalog_Category_View

</category_view>
            </rewrite>
   </catalog>
</block>

Step7:
Cms pages -> home page content area write

{{block type=”catalog/product_featured” name=”product_featured” as=”product_featured” template=”catalog/product/featured.phtml”}}

As you are making a new module so add the .xml file in the app/etc/Module and check whether it is active in admin side or not.
Refesh your page to see the featured product.