What you need to know about the WordPress featured image

What you need to know about the WordPress featured image
Thrive Visual Editor Content

Featured images are a fun and easy way to add a touch of flair to your blog. Just recently, I was giving a client’s blog a slight facelift. Her blog home page showed the full text of the latest blog post and readers often did not realize that more blog posts were below it.

I wanted her readers to see quite a few blog titles above the fold. This is why I changed her front page to more of a magazine style blog. However, the theme does not pick up the in post image by default. She must select a featured image for each post.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to set up a featured image for WordPress blog posts. Also, I will provide you with a few tips along the way.

Below is what the blog looked like before the change. When a reader first landed on the page, they would see all of the content for the latest blog post.

After I made a couple of changes to the WordPress theme that she is using, a reader would see a summary of 10 blog posts by doing a quick scroll. Now, the reader has quite a few blog title choices and hopefully they will click on one of them.

 

After changing the layout of her blog page, she still needs to set her featured image. Notice in the image above the first post is missing the featured image and the second post has one.

Images create interest and help tell the story. People are drawn to images and they also help break up the page. If the front page was only made of text, people would be less likely to click through and read her great writing.

How to set a featured image in WordPress 

Step 1: Log into your WordPress dashboard. 
Step 2: Open the blog post that you want to add a featured image to.

Step 3: Click on Set featured image

Step 3: Click on Set featured image

Step 4: Select the desired image

Step 5: Click on Set Featured image

Step 6: Verify your image loaded

Step 7: Click Update

Since we are on the topic, how about a few tips on images?

Tip 1: Know your required image pixel size.

It is important to know how big the image should be for your blog design. Depending upon where you got your image from, it may be super a large file. I make the images in my blog post 650 pixels wide and then the height adjusts accordingly.

In the video below, I show you a quick tip for finding the proper size for your blog post images.

Tip 2: Resize your image prior to uploading it.

I recommend that you resize the image prior to uploading it. In the video below, I show you how I easily resize images on my Mac.

Resizing your image before you upload it to your blog will keep the browser and theme from having to do this function for you.

Resizing your image so that the system doesn’t have to do it will speed up your blogging. Speeding up your blog will improve SEO and make your readers happy.

Tip3: What is the size of your image file?

One of the easiest tips for speed up a blog is optimizing your images. Large image files (Kweight) slow down the load times of a site. This is why you want to compress an image prior to uploading it to your blog.

If your blog design needs a facelift, consider reorganizing your layout to use featured images. I hope this tutorial helped you learn how to use featured images on a WordPress blog.