[Mediawiki-l] Make an article a Featured Article

[Azurite]

I can't believe this hasn't been asked before in some form or another, but
I've searched through all of the archives of the ML, plus the MediaWiki
documentation and other wiki communities, but I haven't been able to find
anything - how do you make an article a "featured" article so it shows up on
the main page for a short period of time? Can you establish a certain
category or series of articles to be "featured" and show up each time
someone visits the Main Page? Is there a way to specially differentiate
between the main page content and the featured article, as per making the
background different or something?
Thanks for your time.
~Azurite