I am not a coder. All I do is graphics. Apparently I do not understand what is a simple concept for the rest of you all. This is why I will pay $10-$20 dollars for someone who can tell me how to get a jquery slider to display featured content on the homepage and have it linked to a corresponding page about the piece of work.

Such as homepage.ss and $slider (or whatever it would be) linking to (name-of-site.ss)

And also how would I add a portfolio page?

I would like it to have a custom field or two where I can upload a picutre for the slider (large image) and for the portfolio (which would be a thumbnail)

Custom pages types and elements will almost always require proficiency in PHP to pull them off in SS. The long term questions like "How will you handle changes/updates in the future" and "What is the long term maintenance on this code?" pop up quickly.

With that in mind are you still set on using a fully backed CMS like SS? Do you have a reason to go outside your comfort zone to use SS or are you willing to adopt a compensation strategy for any/all changes?

Can the following be done in silverstripe for a sophisticated home pager slider.

1) When the page loads, it automatically cycles through 6 or more slides.

2) The default automatic cycle should have a segmented animation IN and OUT.
(I.E background image fades in, then some text fades in, then another piece of text or copy line fades in.) This process will create one slide and pause for a few seconds and then all components will fade out to transition into another slide with the same process.

3) navigational buttons/numbers that correspond to each slide should have the accordian effect as the rotator animates through the cycle.

4) the backend cms should be able to create each slide with the ability to modify all the components of each slide. the components will be the text, fade control of the different texts copy's, and placement, and links to the slide.

Of course...
It requires some coding though...

Maybe Nicolaas' slideshow-module is a start... but I haven't checked it myself.
You may also want to find a javascript (jquery, prototype or something else) that does the things you want.
I guess the slideshow-module will guide you with regard to implementing it.

If it works nicely... I'd say: post it as an unsupported module, because there is no such a module yet.