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A little tricky, unless someone else has an easier way.

You could compare the date published with the current date and use an if statement to show the featured article

There are some posts on comparing dates that might point you in the right direction.

Here's an excerpt from The CMSB Cookbook that discusses an approach to comparing dates. You should be able to easily modify the code to fit your needs.

Hope it helps.

Jerry Kornbluth
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COMPARING DATES
When combined with the “if” statement, this extremely useful concept can be used to show or hide fields based on a particular date, automatically archive records after a specified time period and perform many other functions.

Here’s the basic idea of how to compare a date field to today’s date on a list page. This example uses a date field called “opening_reception” in a multi record editor called “exhibitions”. The goal was to automatically hide the opening reception date after the date had passed.

<!– First you’ll need a “foreach” statement to display each record. -->

<?php foreach ($exhibitionsRecords as $record): ?>

Since dates are normally expressed as months, days and years are hard to compare mathematically, the dates are converted to the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT

Dave suggested to first define a few variables and to use simple, descriptive names so that the process is easier to follow. Then set some rules for the comparisons. You can use mathematical operators like <, >, <= or >= between values to compare them in different ways.

<?php
$eventUnixTime = strtotime( $record['reception_date'] ); // seconds since 1970
$eventDateString = date("l, F jS", $eventUnixTime); // example format: Monday, June 1st
$currentUnixTime = time();
$currentDateString = date("l, F jS", $currentUnixTime);

$isEventToday = ($eventDateString == $currentDateString); // first comparison
$isEventOver = !$isEventToday && ($eventUnixTime < $currentUnixTime); // second comparison
$isFutureEvent = !$isEventOver && !$isEventToday; // third comparison
?>

Then it becomes a simple matter of comparing the variables

<?php if ($isFutureEvent): ?>
Opening Reception: <?php echo $eventDateString ?>

<?php elseif ($isEventToday): ?>
The Opening reception is today. Don't miss it!!

<?php else: ?>
Sorry, you missed the Opening Reception.

<?php endif; ?>

and don’t forget the endforeach statement to close your loop.

<?php endforeach ?>


Or, Let’s say you want to group a set of meetings by future and past dates

You could use:

<div >UPCOMING MEETINGS:</div>


<?php foreach ($general_meetingsRecords as $record): ?>

<?php
$eventUnixTime = strtotime( $record['date'] ); // seconds since 1970
$eventDateString = date("l, F jS", $eventUnixTime); // example format: Monday, June 1st
$currentUnixTime = time();
$currentDateString = date("l, F jS", $currentUnixTime);
$isEventOver = !$isEventToday && ($eventUnixTime < $currentUnixTime);
$isFutureEvent = !$isEventOver && !$isEventToday;
?>

<?php if ($isFutureEvent): ?>
<br /><?php echo date("D, M jS, Y g:i a", strtotime($record['date'])) ?>
<br />
<?php echo $record['content'] ?>
<hr align="left" width="100" />

<?php endif; ?>
<?php endforeach ?>

<br />

<div >UPCOMING MEETINGS:</div>


<?php foreach ($general_meetingsRecords as $record): ?>

<?php
$eventUnixTime = strtotime( $record['date'] ); // seconds since 1970
$eventDateString = date("l, F jS", $eventUnixTime); // example format: Monday, June 1st
$currentUnixTime = time();
$currentDateString = date("l, F jS", $currentUnixTime);
$isEventOver = !$isEventToday && ($eventUnixTime < $currentUnixTime);
$isFutureEvent = !$isEventOver && !$isEventToday;

?>
<?php if ($isEventOver): ?>
<br /><?php echo date("D, M jS, Y g:i a", strtotime($record['date'])) ?>
<br />
<?php echo $record['content'] ?>
<hr align="left" width="100" />

<?php endif; ?>
<?php endforeach ?>

Note that you have to redefine the variables for each “foreach” loop

If you want to compare other field values, just define more variables and compare those as well.