Recently one of our readers who has a multi-author WordPress blog asked us if there was a way to make sure that each author adds a feature image for their posts. Like most things, the answer is yes. In this article, we will show you how to require featured images for posts in WordPress. If the featured image is not found, then the publish functionality will return an error asking the author to add the featured image.
Why Require Featured Images for Posts?
WordPress makes it extremely easy to add featured images also known as post thumbnails. This is why most WordPress themes comes with built-in support for these additional image sizes. A lot of these layouts do not look good if the post thumbnail is missing.
The problem comes when you accidentally forget to add a featured image and publish the post. This gets worst if you have a multi-author team, and you don’t have a good editorial workflow.
To ensure that the featured image is always there, you have two options. First, you can set a default fallback featured image and that will sort of fix the issue because it will display a default image if no thumbnail was found.
Now while this fixes the layout issue, it is not always best case scenario. Alternatively, you can require featured images for all posts before they can be published.
Video Tutorial
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Requiring Featured Images in WordPress
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Require Featured Image plugin. This plugin works out of the box, so there are no settings for you to configure. Simply go to Posts » Add New, and you will see a red notification informing you that this post can not be published without a featured image. You will also notice that the Publish button is disabled.
Now go ahead and upload a featured image to the post. As soon as you do that, the notice will disappear and the Publish button is enabled again.
This is a very simple and clever solution to get the job done.
You can also add a pre-publish blog post checklist to your WordPress site that will allow authors to check the items before publishing a post.
We hope this answers how to require featured images for posts in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 14 best featured image plugins and tutorials for WordPress.
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Dave Navarro says
I really wish there was a plugin that set the default featured image by category/taxonomy.
WPBeginner Support says
Take a look at our guide on how to add a default featured image in WordPress. You can modify the code by adding conditional tags, like
is_tax()oris_category(). An untested example code:<?php if ( is_tax() ) :
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
the_post_thumbnail();
} else { ?>
<?php }
endif;
?>
Admin
Joy Baker says
I’d like to set this feature for creating pages instead of posts. Is there a plugin for that?
Rajesh says
Thanks for such nice and easy solutions. But can you suggest some of the best FREE resources to grab and use images for blog post, which we can publish or reuse. Thank you!
WPBeginner Support says
Check out our guide on how to find royalty free images to use in your blog posts.
Admin
Zimbrul says
My question might sound stupid but here I go: does the WordPress scale down the image when inserting it as a featured image if the image is larger than the required featured image?
I mean, when you insert a featured image you have the option to choose from the pre-set images sizes. Does that mean the featured image is automatically scaled down when displayed as “featured image”?
Never digged into this one until now.
Paul says
Just wanted to say thanks, clever plug idea, it helps with a single person blog as well
Enjoy your info quite a bit, thanks for the effort.