How do I make a featured image active?
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Total beginner here. In the Wilson theme, I have selected a featured image, and updated, and the image does show up in the Featured Image box, but it does not display on the site. What do I need to do to activate the featured image in a post or a static page?
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Hi there. Featured images don’t necessarily appear on a post or page. Featured images appear with your post preview in the Reader and when you share to social media, and also as the post thumbnail in Related Posts, the Recent Posts widget and the Top Posts and Pages widget. Some themes display the featured image on the front page and some themes display it as a post header, but not all. http://en.support.wordpress.com/featured-images/
To have an image appear inside the post itself, you have to add it using the Add Media button: https://en.support.wordpress.com/images/adding-images-to-posts-or-pages/
If you haven’t yet, you might want to work through the “Learn WordPress” support doc (http://learn.wordpress.com/) and the “Video Quick Start” tutorial (http://en.support.wordpress.com/video-quick-start/). They cover most of the basics.
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Thanks, kokkieh. I had spent hours sifting through those instruction pages without seeing what I needed, but I have worked it out now!
In case anybody else has the same puzzlement I had, here is what I now seem to understand. What I was wondering was how to get the large image to show above the post title, as it appears on the Wilson theme demo. You can’t do it by using Add Media, that only adds images below the title in the body of the post. I thought that image must be the featured image, and indeed it is. But it is not the featured image for the Posts page, it is the featured image for the top post. In the demo, it is in fact the featured image for the the featured (i.e. sticky) post – that is why it says “featured” on the corner of the image. But the featured image of your latest post will show there if you have no sticky post. The image is displayed not on the post itself, but only on the main posts page.
I hope that the folks handling the instructional documentation will fill in a bit more information about featured images and featured posts, both are very important visually but hard to understand from the material I was able to find – though in general the instructional material is really helpful.
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I hope that the folks handling the instructional documentation will fill in a bit more information about featured images and featured posts,
Please be aware that this differs from theme to theme, which is why the regular support doc does not explain this. Not all themes have featured posts and those that do don’t all treat them the same. It’s simply not feasible to have the featured images support doc explain the specifics for every possible theme.
Usually this is covered in the theme’s support doc, but I see Wilson’s support doc is extremely lacking in detail. I’ll tag this for staff so they can see your feedback.
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Hi there!
I’ll ask the theme’s developer if he might like to add some more information to Wilson’s informational page. We definitely don’t want you pulling your hair out…and it’s a really lovely theme, it’d be a shame for it to lose folks.
Much appreciated.
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Thanks, kokkieh and thatrobyn. Yes, I see it differs from theme to theme, but actually just explaining something broad about the kinds of functions featured images can be used for (as you did in your earlier message, kokkieh), and that for some themes that use them there can be different featured images on different pages, could be helpful. I am glad you are passing my query on to the developer of Wilson – you’re right, it is a very sweet theme, and there are doubtless other newbs who could use more orientation with it too!
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