Wordpress how does featured image work

Featured images are a vital WordPress feature, one any blog owner can benefit from becoming familiar with. Adding a WordPress featured image to each post or article helps you visually represent the content for your readers. It can even be an essential part of your branding strategy. Adding featured images in WordPress is simple. Do you have any questions about the best way to use featured images on your blog or website?

Ask in the comments section below! Image credits: Pxhere , Wikimedia Commons. Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Looking for some free blog sites to help you start sharing your writing with the world?

So you want to create a WordPress blog… Congratulations! WordPress is an excellent solution for how to start a blog, plus we think blogs are super awesome! People love to share ideas, give shape to their thoughts, and maybe even reach a global audience.

How to put yourself on the path to achieve all of that? For once, what if you start a Believe it or not, but knowing how to make a website from scratch is one of the more essential skills you should master as a small business owner in this day and age. Please bear with me! The web host you choose to power your WordPress site plays a key role in its speed and performance. However, with so many claiming to offer the fastest WordPress hosting out there, how do you decide which company to use?

In addition to performance, This is a great idea if you want a development site that can be used for testing or other purposes. You can also find suitable stock photos from Unsplash, Getty, and other stock photo websites. When you add an image to your media library, WordPress automatically makes three copies of the original image in three dimensions:. These copies are created so the image can be used in different sections of your website without needing to resize the original image each time, which would decrease page performance.

For example, imagine uploading a x pixel image as a featured image. This relatively high resolution makes sense when placing the image full-width on the top of a post. However, it would be impractical to squeeze this large image into a smaller area, like an image gallery. That's why WordPress makes smaller versions of the same file. For instance, your WordPress theme might require larger or smaller dimensions for your featured images in different places on your site.

In this case, the theme might automatically overwrite the default WordPress image sizes. Alternatively, you might want to adjust these dimensions manually. Again, this is easy to do in WordPress — let's learn how. To change the sizes of your featured image, the first place you should look is your theme.

Many themes add their own featured image dimensions to be used in place of the WordPress defaults. Check the options under the Appearance tab in your WordPress admin dashboard, and look for options to toggle the featured image size within your specific theme. If no option exists in your theme settings, you can change the default featured image size in your WordPress settings. Default image sizes are only applied when you upload images to WordPress, so the new dimensions will only apply to images uploaded after you change these settings.

To resize your old images to the latest specifications, re-upload them manually or use the Regenerate Thumbnails WordPress plugin to handle this for you. Also, consider cropping featured images to the WordPress thumbnail dimensions before uploading to avoid issues with auto-cropping. But, again, some experimentation will probably be necessary here to achieve a good fit. Featured images have the potential to attract not only readers but search engines too. You just need the right alternative text and title.

The chances of your content showing up in search results is higher if you use clear alt texts containing relevant keywords. Similarly, putting relevant keywords in the featured image title also helps search engines index your pages. Note that all non-decorative images on your website should have alternative text and descriptive titles, not just your featured images. For most WordPress websites, featured images are a no-brainer. They engage and inform your visitors, unify your brand, provide a professional look, boost SEO, and increase the overall value of your website for your leads and customers.

It might sound nit-picky, but the look, layout, and meta-details of your featured images matter a lot. How can you show the value of your content if you don't nail the first photo? Editor's note: This post was originally published in July and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Nov 9, AM, updated November 09 Logo - Full Color. We're always looking to improve our documentation. If this page didn't answer your question or left you wanting more, let us know! We love hearing your feedback. For support, please use the forums or contact support form. An Automattic Opus. Close the navigation menu Get Started. Setting a Featured Image Open the editor of the post or page where you want to display a unique custom header image, and locate the Featured Image module on the right.

For example, your custom header may look like this:. Still confused? Contact support. Help us improve: We're always looking to improve our documentation.

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