(Astroblogging) I run blog aggregators.

This means I spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at other people’s RSS feeds.

It’s exciting work.

Really.

Recently, while getting Astrology Blogger, Romance Bloggers, and SFF Bloggers back into fighting shape, I ran across a recurring problem.

A blogger publishes a lovely article.

The article has an image.

I can see the image.

You can see the image.

The blogger can certainly see the image.

My aggregator?

What image? There’s an image? Where?

Welcome to today’s lesson:

Just because an image appears on your webpage doesn’t mean your website is exporting it with your RSS feed.

But The Image Is Right There!

I know.

I believe you.

Unfortunately, the aggregator isn’t looking at your webpage the way a human visitor does.

It’s reading your RSS feed.

RSS—Really Simple Syndication—is a standardized way for websites to send information about newly published content to other applications and websites.

Your RSS feed might essentially announce:

New article!

Title: The Astrology of People Who Don’t Configure Their RSS Feeds

Author: Beth Turnage

Link: Here you go.

Article: Here’s the text.

Image:

Image?

Hello?

If the feed doesn’t contain the image, the receiving system may have no reliable way to know which picture belongs to the article.

That your browser can display it beautifully on the original page doesn’t solve the problem.

The webpage and the RSS feed are not the same thing.

WordPress Bloggers: Meet the Featured Image

WordPress has a particularly convenient solution: the featured image.

When you assign an image as the featured image for a post, you do more than decorate the page. You’re identifying a particular image as representing that article.

Themes can use it.

Social-sharing tools can use it.

Archive pages can use it.

Plugins can use it.

And, with the appropriate feed configuration, your RSS feed can send the image along with your article.

That’s extremely useful when your content travels somewhere else.

If you’re using WordPress and syndicating your work, use featured images.

Please.

Somewhere, an aggregator administrator will silently bless you.

What If My Website Doesn’t Have Featured Images?

This question prompted this article.

Not every blogging platform uses WordPress’s featured-image system.

That’s perfectly fine.

But something still has to tell the RSS feed which image belongs to your article.

Putting an image on your webpage doesn’t automatically put it in the RSS feed. If your website doesn’t have a featured-image system that handles this automatically, make sure the image is included in the content your feed exports.

Here’s a generic example of an image included in an RSS feed’s article content:

<item>
  <title>Example Article Title</title>
  <link>https://example.com/example-article/</link>
  <description><![CDATA[
    <img
      src="https://example.com/images/article-image.jpg"
      alt="Description of the image"
    />
    <p>A short introduction to the article goes here.</p>
  ]]></description>
</item>

Replace the example addresses, title, and description with your own. The image URL must point directly to a publicly accessible image file.

This code belongs inside the RSS feed, which uses XML. The CDATA wrapper lets the HTML image and paragraph tags appear inside it. The aggregator must also be configured to recognize and import images from the feed content.

In other words, your webpage saying, “Look at my lovely picture,” isn’t enough.

Your RSS feed has to say:

AND TAKE THIS WITH YOU.

No, I’m Not Telling You to Code Every Blog Post Twice

Everybody relax.

If your website generates its RSS feed automatically—and most blogging systems do—you shouldn’t have to sit down after every post and personally compose XML.

The example above shows what needs to reach the aggregator, not necessarily what you need to type every Tuesday afternoon.

Depending on your website, this might be handled by your publishing platform, a plugin, a feed template, or a small change made by whoever maintains your site.

The goal is simply this:

Article goes into RSS feed. Image goes with article. Everybody is happy.

In Astr

Article goes into RSS feed. Image stays home.

Aggregator administrator starts drinking.

How Do I Know If My Image Is Being Exported?

Here’s the wonderfully low-tech test.

Open your RSS feed.

Find one of your recent posts.

Search for the filename or URL of the image that appears with the article.

Found it?

Excellent. Your website is exporting the image.

Can’t find it?

Neither can my aggregator.

And that’s the important distinction.

An aggregator can’t import an image that your website never sent it.

Your beautiful photograph hasn’t been rejected.

Your carefully designed illustration hasn’t offended anybody.

Your aggregator isn’t sitting there thinking, I don’t care for that shade of blue.

The image simply never got on the bus.

Why Should I Care?

Because your blog post doesn’t necessarily stay on your blog anymore.

It may travel through RSS readers, blog aggregators, newsletter systems, content-discovery services, automated publishing tools, and other websites.

We live in an extraordinarily visual Internet.

Compare two syndicated posts.

One has an attractive image.

The other is a headline followed by a wall of text.

Which one are you going to notice first?

Exactly.

You spent time finding, buying, photographing, designing, or generating that image.

Let the poor thing leave the house.

Your Webpage Isn’t Your Feed

That’s really the lesson.

A webpage and an RSS feed are two different representations of your content.

You can have a gorgeous webpage with beautiful images while simultaneously maintaining an RSS feed that cheerfully sends the rest of the Internet nothing but text.

If your blogging software supports featured images, use them and make sure your feed exports them.

If your website doesn’t use featured images, make sure the image associated with the article is included in the RSS content your site exports.

And if you don’t know whether it is?

Check.

Because somewhere out there, an aggregator may currently be staring at your beautifully illustrated article and saying:

Nice post.

Shame about the picture.

The Internet Is Basically a Group Project

This is something rebuilding my aggregators has reminded me of.

I can fix my websites.

I can configure FeedWordPress.

I can fix image importing.

I can connect Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and Tumblr.

I can get posts moving through the network again.

I can make sure Astrology Blogger, Romance Bloggers, and SFF Bloggers are ready to receive your content.

But an aggregator is ultimately a relationship between websites.

My end can be working perfectly.

If your feed sends the article without its image, I receive an article without its image.

Technology has many remarkable abilities.

Telepathy is apparently not among them.

So please, before you send your beautiful blog post out into the world, make sure its image is packed and ready to travel.

Your aggregator administrator will thank you.

And, more importantly, your image can grab an electron to board the information superhighway!