#AstrologyBlogging #Wordpress #FeaturedImage
(Astroblogging) In one science-fiction story I wrote, an aging Professor Halloran in the not-so-distant future conducts a class on HTML to teach his students logic and independent thinking. He describes a time when humans told computers what to do, rather than the other way around.
His young students are shocked by the idea.
So was the AI monitoring the classroom.
Shortly afterward, medical AIs arrive to treat Professor Halloran for his independent thought. They transport him to the Cognitive Wellness Center for supportive realignment.
Whether this is the future of humanity, one thing is certain. Despite the advances in WordPress technology, we still need to tell the programs what to do.
And one way we do that is by setting the Featured Image.
What Is a WordPress Featured Image?
A featured image is the image that WordPress associates with the post itself, rather than merely an image displayed somewhere inside the post.
Think of it as the post’s visual calling card.
Where that image appears on your website depends heavily on your WordPress theme. Some themes display it prominently above the article. Others put it beside the title, use it on archive and category pages, or turn it into a large banner.
Some themes barely display it on the individual post at all.
That’s one reason bloggers sometimes ignore the option. If setting a featured image doesn’t seem to change much on the page you’re looking at, it can feel unnecessary.
But your individual post isn’t necessarily where that image matters most.
Your Featured Image Travels
This subject came up recently when I asked one of the authors whose blog feeds into my Romance Bloggers aggregator to begin setting featured images on her posts.
She was already using images in her posts. But the aggregator wasn’t getting an image to post.
That’s because an image inside a post isn’t necessarily the same thing, as far as WordPress and other software are concerned, as the image designated to represent the post.
Humans look at the page and say:
“There’s the picture.”
Computers are considerably more literal.
“Yes, but which picture did you tell me represents the post?”
That’s the featured image.
When a source blog provides the information the aggregator needs, Romance Bloggers can import the post with an appropriate image. Without that information, I might have the article but lack a useful image to accompany it.
The same principle extends far beyond aggregators.
Featured Images Matter Beyond Your Blog
Your website isn’t the only place your blog post may appear.
It may show up on your homepage, category pages, archives, RSS feeds, aggregators, and other websites. You may also share it on social media.
All those systems have to decide what image represents your post.
Different services use different methods to make that decision, and setting a featured image doesn’t guarantee that every social network on Earth will obediently display it. Social-sharing plugins, metadata, platform caching, and other technical gremlins can still get involved.
But by setting a featured image, you’ve given WordPress and its plugins an explicit answer:
This is the image that represents this post.
That becomes especially important when you automate distribution.
I’m increasingly using WordPress and Jetpack Social to publish content once and distribute it to several social platforms.
Before, I dreaded visiting every destination manually, creating another post, finding the image again, uploading it, pasting the link, and repeating the process somewhere else.
That’s what the automation is for.
But automation works much better when we give it structured information.
Title: Here’s my title.
Excerpt: Here’s what the post is about.
Link: Here’s where the article lives.
Image: Here’s the image that represents it.
Professor Halloran would approve.
Well, possibly.
He’s had a difficult time with computers lately.
“But I Already Put a Picture in My Post”
Good.
You must designate that image as the featured image.
You don’t need to create two different images.
Depending on your theme, however, you’ll want to preview the post afterward. Some WordPress themes automatically display the featured image above your content. If you’ve also manually inserted the same image at the beginning of the article, you could end up displaying it twice.
Themes handle featured images differently.
On my Miss Primm blog, for instance, I’ve been making teaser cards for different scenes from my Justix Files books. I can put several of those images into a single post.
Those are ordinary content images.
But only one is the Featured Image.
That’s the one I’m specifically telling WordPress:
This is the picture that represents this post.
Where Did WordPress Hide the Featured Image Setting?
And now we come to the fun part.
Finding it.
If you’ve used WordPress for a long time, you may remember when many of these settings were sitting there waiting for you in fairly obvious places.
Newer block-based WordPress interfaces can make the Featured Image setting considerably less obvious if you don’t already know where to look.
Generally, you want the post settings, not the individual block settings.
Depending on your WordPress version, theme, and editing interface, you’ll usually find the Featured Image control among the post settings in the editor’s sidebar.
If you can’t see those settings, you may first have to open the settings/sidebar panel.
And this section is where I offer one of the great truths of modern WordPress:
If you know a setting exists but can’t find it, WordPress has probably hidden it behind something you’re supposed to know to click.
Those of us who remember simply typing HTML into a box are handling this transition extremely well.
Professor Halloran has declined to comment.
Choose the Image Deliberately
Don’t make the featured image an afterthought.
If this is the image that may represent your article elsewhere, ask yourself what it looks like when it is separated from the article.
Does it make sense?
Is the important part of the image reasonably centered so that cropping won’t destroy it?
If there’s text on the image, can someone read it when the image is displayed smaller?
Does the image tell someone scrolling past it anything about the post?
This is especially important because different themes and platforms may crop the same image differently.
An elaborate graphic that looks gorgeous at full size can become an indecipherable postage stamp somewhere else.
Sometimes simpler really is better.
Don’t Forget the Alt Text
While you’re setting your Featured Image, there’s another box you shouldn’t ignore: Alt Text.
Where Does Alt Text Go?
When you select an image from the WordPress Media Library—or upload a new one—WordPress displays information about that image. Among those fields, you’ll find one labeled Alt Text or Alternative Text.
That’s where you enter a short description of what the image shows or what information it conveys.
For example, if my featured image shows Professor Halloran standing in his futuristic classroom while medical robots arrive to cart him off to the Cognitive Wellness Center, I might write:
Professor Halloran is confronted by medical AI robots in a futuristic classroom.
Why Does Alt Text Matter?
First, alt text is important for accessibility. A visitor using a screen reader may not be able to see the image, so appropriate alternative text helps convey the image’s meaning or purpose.
But there’s another audience examining your website:
Bots.
Search-engine crawlers and other automated systems examine your website trying to understand what’s on each page. Alt text gives those systems explicit information about an image and what it contributes to the page.
SEO auditing and scoring tools also commonly check your images for alt text. Leave it out, and you may find missing alt text flagged in your site audit or your SEO score lowered.
I like to imagine the bot encountering an unexplained image and saying, in bot language:
“I don’t see this, and I should.”
Provide a useful description, and you’ll add another piece of information about what your page contains.
Don’t Stuff Alt Text With Keywords
That doesn’t mean the Alt Text box is a convenient place to dump every SEO keyword you can think of.
If the picture is of a Full Moon over a city, don’t write:
Astrology Zodiac Horoscope Birth Chart Full Moon Astrology Blog Zodiac Signs
That’s not a description. That’s keyword stuffing.
Something like:
Full Moon rising over a city skyline
actually describes what the image conveys.
There’s also an important exception. If an image is purely decorative and adds no meaningful information to the page, accessibility guidelines generally recommend using empty alt text rather than forcing someone using a screen reader to listen to a description of meaningless decoration.
So we’ve now given WordPress two different pieces of information:
Featured Image: This is the image that represents my post.
Alt Text: This is what this image means or conveys.
Once again, we’re doing exactly what Professor Halloran told his incredulous students people once did:
We’re telling the computer what to do.
WordPress has become vastly more sophisticated since the days when many of us typed HTML directly into a box and told the computer exactly what we wanted it to do.
But underneath all that sophistication, one principle hasn’t changed very much.
Sometimes the computer still needs a human being to point at something and say:“Use this one.”
Do you set a featured image for every blog post, or is this one of those WordPress settings you’ve been happily ignoring?
