Periodically sliding images
Here few suggestion:

in the function  you have :

if($i == 1)
{

    var $el = $theWidth;
}else{
    var $el = $theWidth * $i;
}


could be replaced by a single line:

var $el = $theWidth * $i;


and you could modify the following if :

if($i &lt; totalImg)
{
    $('.home-featured-bg .absolute').animate({'margin-left':'-'+$el+'px'},2000);
    $i++;
    $('.events-links a').eq($i - 1).css('display','block');
}else{
    $('.home-featured-bg .absolute').animate({'margin-left':'0px'},2000);
    $i = 1;
    $('.events-links a').eq($i - 1).css('display','block');
}


by extract the $('.events-links a').eq($i - 1).css('display','block');   like this:

if($i &lt; totalImg)
{
    $('.home-featured-bg .absolute').animate({'margin-left':'-'+$el+'px'},2000);
    $i++;
}else{
    $('.home-featured-bg .absolute').animate({'margin-left':'0px'},2000);
    $i = 1;
}
$('.events-links a').eq($i - 1).css('display','block');