Sponsored or highlighted listing?

RE: I was wondering though if there are any options to have specific listings stand out from the rest, perhaps a sponsored listing or highlighted or featured

All Entries can be assigned a category. You could create a sponsored/feature category(ties) and assign those as appropriate to the Entries. The category names are added to the Entry as CSS classes. You can use those classes to create custom CSS to make Entries stand out. Though I have no example I can link to offhand, this is what others have done.

RE: ones that would always appear ontop of their category

Not, in “their” category, but there is the Custom Entry Order addon:

• https://connections-pro.com/add-on/custom-entry-order/

This allows you to order Entries in a custom-defined order. There is also the order_by shortcode option that may or may not be useful to you:

• https://connections-pro.com/documentation/shortcodes/shortcode-connections/order_by/

You could create a page for each category using the category shortcode option in combination with the Custom Entry Order addon to accomplish this. It a bit more work in setup, but doable.

• https://connections-pro.com/documentation/shortcodes/shortcode-connections/category/

Here’s a link to a 3rd party site with a setup similar to what you are asking:

• https://arizonafoodservicenetwork.com/services/

Connections is used quite heavily throughout the site. The developer spent quite some time setting things up exactly the way they wanted.

RE: even better to also have more features or information for their specific listing.

Connections includes a lot of fields by default, and if they are left empty, they do not display anything. So you can choose what to display for an Entry by filling in the field or not.

I hope I have thoroughly answered your questions!