Reader feed displays video or gallery over the feature image
-
I’ve mentioned this in the past with no replies, so sorry if this is repetitive in nature.
Why does the Reader feed default to displaying a video or a image gallery from a post instead of the feature image? Doesn’t the name imply that that image should be featured?
When no video or image gallery is in the body of the post, the feature image displays just fine and dandy. The problem is that often the video and/or image gallery are either taken out of context or are simply not the strongest image to appear.
I know that this is how it is currently, but am asking rather how can I make it stop? Why would it function in this manner to begin with?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
Hi James.
The Reader will try to select the best image from your post based on an image’s size and shape. Most often, the featured image or the first image from the post will be used as the Reader image.
For images to be selected by the Reader on desktop, images must be at least 594px wide and the height cannot be more than 80% of the width. It’s worth noting, however, that these specifications are subject to change as we make improvements to the Reader in the future.
Let me know if that helps out or if you have any extra questions.
-
Thank you for replying, I was feeling that no one was going to answer this!
All of my feature images fall within the parameters you’ve described. I make them as such so they look good on this platform as well as others.
If you look on my site, you’ll be able to see this is true. Once I noticed this tendency to allow videos or image galleries to take precedence over feature image, I became very clinical in my feature image parameters. Believe me.
Yet, if you look at the same posts on your reader, what you’ve described above simply isn’t the case. I swear to you, I’m not making this up.
Yours,
James -
Hi James.
I can see that you’ve set a Featured Image fitting the specs I mentioned for most of your posts, and that videos and galleries are being shown in place of these in your Reader feed. I’m not too sure why this is the case and have asked for clarification on this from the team behind the Reader. I’ll get back to you when I have an answer from them! Thanks for your patience.
-
Ahh, what a relief! You honor me just by recognizing what I’m asking! I was beginning to feel like someone up’d my prescription of crazy pills.
I will be patiently awaiting your discovery! Seriously, thank you for hearing me.
Yours,
James -
Hi James.
A developer on the team behind the Reader confirmed that galleries and embedded videos currently take precedent over Featured Images in a blog’s feed. This may not always be the case, but there’s not a way to override this at the moment.
I hope that’s help to clarify things for you!
-
Alright, I kinda knew that already. That’s why I started this feed in the first place. I’m curious, did they say WHY this is the case? Is there some weird logic that escapes me? It just seems so random, arbitrary and often out of context t the main structure of a particular article.
If I have a post about how to kill ninjas and I make a really nice feature image of a dead ninja that I stayed up all night drawing, and then at some point in the post, I go off on a tangent about how samurai are lazy for one sentence. To illustrate this, I post a video clip that’s ten seconds long showing a sleeping samurai. When people see this as the header in the Reader feed, they’re thinking, “boy this guy is dumb, that’s not a ninja at all!” And then they move on without reading it.
Do you see where I’m going with this? I know what the symptoms are, I just want to know WHY this conscious decision was made.
I guess the only current solution is to never have embedded videos or image galleries ever. But that’s no real solution is it?
Regardless, thank you very much for looking into the matter!
yours,
James -
Hi James.
The team didn’t go into exact detail behind this choice, but I can give you my personal assumptions based on one of the goals of the Reader, which is to provide a convenient way to consume the content of the blogs you follow.
People generally embed videos that are relevant to their post’s content and take time to pick and choose the perfect images for their galleries. Including these in the Reader can therefore be effective in creating a snapshot of a post’s content. I know that, as a heavy user of the Reader myself, I often play videos directly from it to help get an idea of a post’s subject matter before choosing whether to click through to the whole post for more information.
I can, however, understand that there are some cases where videos and galleries aren’t the best representation of a post, such as your hand-crafted ninja image example. :) The team definitely want to feature a post’s most relevant media in the Reader and, as always, feedback such as yours helps us as we continue to iterate.
I’m also afraid that I don’t have a workaround, other than to keep in mind how the Reader currently works when putting your posts together in the future. To be absolutely sure that there’s no workaround, I’ve also sent another note to a developer behind the Reader. I’ll let you know if I hear back with something that would help.
- The topic ‘Reader feed displays video or gallery over the feature image’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 