Article always on top

My friend asked me if there is any universal way to the selected article was always the first on the list of news. I thought a moment and really are at least two methods that will work regardless of the version of Joomla.

1. The first requires you to easiest to article gave the date of its creation in the future, for example, such as 12/12/2012. In this way, to this date, this article will always be first, but only if you display the articles sorted by date of creation. Remember to turn off the display of data fields for the “highest” article, because otherwise it will look strange.
2. Second method is based on the use of the module in which you can place the content of the article. Distribution of modules depends on the template layout, nevertheless, gives more configuration options, especially after the installation of the Advanced Module Manager (nonumber.nl). The disadvantage of this solution is that from what I remember, that the system searches for bypassing the content of the modules.