Some times you need to show featured product in magento home page. So, In this blog post i am going to tell "How to display magento featured product in homepage". For a newbie, it is not easy task to add featured product but here is easy steps which will explain how to add magento product in homepage using category.

To show a featured product, Just Follow the steps given below.
1. Log in to your Magento Admin panel.
2. Create a Sub category by going to Catalog -> Manage Categories-> Add Subcategory.
3. click on Add Subcategory under any one of the root category

Now Fill General Information.
Name: featured // your subcategory name  (this name can be anything of your choice).
Is Active: No // If you don't want to load category on store front-end.
Include in Navigation Menu: No // If you do not want your category to be appeared in navigation

After click on save button , you will see category ID above the General Information tab.
like this-> featured (ID: 45)

5. Add some products in featured category.
6. Go to CMS-> Pages-> Homepage-> Content
Now Add the below code in Home page content.

{{block type="catalog/product_list" column_count="4" category_id="45" template="catalog/product/list.phtml"}}

Replace category_id="45" with your category id number. & click on save button.
Go to front end, now you will see magento featured product in your home page.