What are Featured Images on WordPress?

The featured image in WordPress development

Featured Image is a WordPress feature for theme developers. It supports the use of a representative image in a variety of ways, including articles and pages.

Theme creators can easily insert a picture put forward into their themes. To do this, they can simply add an extract of code to its functions.php. They can also choose to configure the management of uploaded images via WordPress. They can style them, choose thumbnail sizes and enable or disable their display.

Why use a foreground image?

The featured images are a crucial WordPress feature for any blog owner. Adding an image to every post helps visually characterize the content for your readers. Images can play a vital role in your marketing strategy.

The featured image is the one that will be associated with the publication extract. Therefore, it's the only image that will be visible when your content is shared.

It is easy to add featured images to WordPress content. However, a number of good practices are recommended:

Keep the style of your images as consistent as possible. Keep in mind that your images will appear side-by-side in your blog archives.
Use free images or Creative Commons-licensed photos to avoid copyright issues.
Optimize your images before downloading. By reducing the volume of image files, you prevent them from slowing down the loading of your site.

When to use a featured image?

The featured images are often used in layouts of several types of WordPress themes. Of course, they are an essential element of all photography themes.

They are also an important feature for news and entertainment sites, where an image is attached to each article. In short, featured images have become a standard for blogs. Nowadays, a blog post without an image seems rather bland and outdated.

Each post on your Wordpress site should have its own featured image. Seek some consistency, while avoiding repetition. Choose images that represent the brand image you want to promote.

Updated on: 02/05/2023