The 7th in the series of…
20 Secret Blogging Tips in 20 Days!
Are we near the end yet? 😉 Check out the bottom of this post to see the rest.
You already know how to add images to your posts. The legal kind, right? Perhaps you are like me and add a few images to your posts. You do? Yay for you!
Today we’re going to learn how to set one of those images as the Featured Image, and why we might want to do that.
What’s a Featured Image?
It’s simply an image you’ve denoted as being ‘important’. What happens next is up to your site and it’s design.
Sometimes a site will show the Featured Image on the home page with a snippet of text next to it describing what the post is about (like I do here on AreWeConnected.com).
Sometimes a site will use the Featured Image for a slider or a widget. EastBayRealEstate does that in both the slider section (Featured Images in Posts) and the Communities section (Featured Images in Pages) just below.
Sometimes a site will use the Featured Image in what is called an Archive Page. That’s exactly what I do with the category search for all posts on WordPress.
Sometimes a site doesn’t use the Featured Image at all. That’s just fine. If you are happy with your site and the way it looks- no worries. By the way – if you are NOT happy – You know I build custom WordPress sites, right?
Ok, HOW do I do that?
It’s drop dead simple. When you write a post, add images, do all those other things you need to do and then… just before you click the Publish Button –
That’ll open up a lightbox where you can choose the images from your media library or upload a new one.
When you have set the Featured Image you’ll notice the thumbnail now shows up in the dashboard sidebar. There’s also a link under it just in case you want to remove it and change it to a different one.
Hint: If your site is using a slider (that image rotator usually up at the top on the home page) you’ll want to make sure the image you set as the Featured Image is big enough to cover the width. Anything larger than 960px wide should do fine.
My site doesn’t use Featured Images, do I really need to do this?
Even if your blog doesn’t take advantage of the Featured Image, other things do. Like Facebook, like FeedReaders, perhaps even the mobile version of your site does? Have you checked? Often times these outside sites will look in the code for the Featured Image to be designated. If and when it is, they’ll use it.
BONUS TIP: Thanks for reading all the way down to here. Did you know that the image you use as the Featured Image doesn’t even have to appear in the post? That’s right – you can upload a completely seperate image! Sometimes I’ll use that just to attract a little more attention to the post.
For the record this post is a rehashed version of How to Set a Featured Image for your Posts which I wrote over a year ago.
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Mike Mueller
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one,bought a cool orange one, and still rides a really slow one), he loves strong beer and good red wine.
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