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How to Add Captions to Featured Images in WordPress

Do you need to add captions to your featured images in WordPress?

Captions are helpful because they add context and background information about the images you use. However, many WordPress themes don’t display captions for a post’s featured image.

In this article, we’ll show you how to display captions for your featured images in WordPress.

How to Add Captions to Featured Images in WordPress

Why Add Captions to Featured Images in WordPress?

Featured images are a WordPress theme feature. Almost all WordPress themes come with built-in support for featured images and display them beautifully across different areas of your WordPress website.

Adding a featured image to your post will make it look more appealing and build user engagement. To learn more, check our guide on how to add featured images or post thumbnails in WordPress.

When you upload a featured image, you have the option to add a caption and description, along with other fields.

When You Add a Featured Image You Are Asked to Add a Caption and Description

But when the image is displayed on your website, it may only show the image.

This depends on the theme you are using. For example, the Twenty Twenty and Twenty Twenty-One themes do show featured image captions by default. The Twenty Sixteen and Twenty Nineteen themes do not.

If your WordPress theme does not display featured image captions, then we’ll show you how to add them by using a plugin.

Adding Captions to Featured Images in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the FSM Custom Featured Image Caption plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » FSM Custom Featured Image Caption page to configure the plugin.

The default settings will work for many users, however, if you want the featured image captions to be displayed on the front page of your WordPress website, then make sure you click the ‘Show image captions in lists’ checkbox.

FSM Custom Featured Image Caption Settings

For this tutorial, we’ll leave the ‘Default Class’ option selected. However, if you would like to style the caption using your own custom CSS, then you should select one of the other two options.

Once you have finished selecting those options, make sure you click the Save Changes button to store your settings.

You’re finished! When you visit your WordPress website, you should see any captions that you have added to your feature images.

Here are before and after screenshots from our demonstration website. We are using the Twenty Sixteen theme that does not show featured image captions by default.

Featured Image Caption Preview

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to add captions to your featured images in WordPress.

You may also want to learn how to choose the best web design software , or check out list of must have plugins to grow your site.

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27 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Hello,
    I tried to get the featured image by calling the specific post ID and get_post function but everything is okay except featured image. It does not show featured image.

    is there problem to call by post ID and get_post(); ?

    my code?

    // custome template (community)


    post_title; ?>

    post_content; ?>

    Please any idea?

  2. Thank you for explaining this! I just needed to add the image captions and spent a lot of time searching for a solution…..I found a lot of other answers on the WP support forum, but none of them explained how featured images are stored……such a simple thing now that I understand.

  3. Hello, great post.
    Please explain if I can do that in other website.
    I d like to show article or category from wordpress blog on opencart website.
    Thank you

  4. Sry, I don´t rly get it…
    In which loop exactly do i have to paste the code?

    Maybe it´s just me being brain-afk, sry for that.

  5. Thanks a lot, I have been looking for this and this is the best and simple explanation of how to add the image caption for featured images.

    Thanks

  6. Short neat and to the point. Only critic goes for not providing example output for the short article. For other readers: Remember to read the related posts!

  7. How can I style the caption?
    It is rendering the caption line outside of the DIV class in the source code? What am I doing wrong.

    Thanks in advance,
    Gary

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