How to Add Featured Image On WordPress (2 Methods)

Featured image, also called thumbnail in post, is a popular feature in WordPress themes. Today, the most popular WordPress themes have built-in support for thumbnails. In this WP tutorial, I’ll show you how to add your featured images or post thumbnails in WordPress.

You may wonder why we use the same name: popular images, then thumbnails in posts. So, when this feature was first introduced in WordPress 2.9, it was called thumbnails in posts. However, in the next version, it was renamed to featured image.

Importance of Featured Image

Featured images add visual appeal to each post and help the visitor identify the topic with a quick glance. How many times have you clicked on a post with an unattractive image? Not too often, I guess. If you ever fail to add a featured photo to a post, it will look very bad on your blog or website.

There are two ways to add featured images on WP posts:

1. Manually
2. Via Plugin

How To Add/Change Featured Image Manually on WP

1. Go to your WP post
2. Click on the post you want to add or change the featured image.
3. Scroll down by the right of the page until you see featured image.
4. Then click on set featured image
5. From the media library, choose the photo you want to use. Alternatively, you upload it from your device by clicking on upload.
6. Just like adding an image on a WP post, you should change the title, add a caption, alt text and description after it has been uploaded.
7. Finally, click on set featured image.

See>>> Free WordPress Blog Setup Service

How To Add/Change Featured Image Via Plugin on WP

There are a lot of plugins to automatically add featured images to your WordPress post. All plugins function differently. These plugins are;

1. Featured Image from URL (FIFU)

This plugin has many functions which include:

• Auto set featured media from post content
• Auto Set Image Title and alt text
• Hide the featured media (image, video or slider) on posts but keep it visible on home.
• Automatically save photos in the Media Library
• Featured Slider
• Auto set featured media using URL
• Use of external image as featured image
• Auto set featured image using post title and search engine

The only drawback of this plugin is some of the features are premium (you have to pay for it).

2. Auto Featured Image (Auto Post Thumbnail)

Function includes:

1. Automatically generate the Featured photo from the first image in the post only if it is not set manually.
2. How it generates featured images:
   1. Find in the post: it searches for the first image in the post and uses it as a thumbnail
      
   2. Generate from the title: Featured image is created from the title on a coloured background
      
   3. Find or generate: It finds an image in the post, if it is not present, it then generate it from the title
      
   4. Google: It searches for an image by the title of the post in Google
      
   5. Find or Google: It finds an image in the post, if it is not present, search for an image by the title of the post in Google

However, some of these features are premium.

3. Default featured image

Just as the name indicates, it adds a default featured image to the media settings page. That image will show up if no featured image is set. It is as simple as that.

This plugin is totally free.

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