Set a Featured Image In WordPress

In WordPress, the featured image of a page or post is used for several things. Usually, it is the image that:

• appears in the loop – or blog stream
• gets used for meta and opengraph tags, making it the preferred thumbnail image for your content when it’s shared on social media services, like Facebook

Sometimes Featured Images are used differently – some image slider plugins may use a custom post type that creates slides from posts, where the post title is the slide title, the post content is the slide caption, and the featured image is the background image that completes the slider.

To set a Featured Image, navigate to the Post or Page. Look to the right hand column (if your screen is small – a phone, tablet, or minimized browser window, there may be just one column – for the Featured Image Widget.

Click “Set Featured Image”. The Media Library will open up. Just like when placing an image in a Page or Post, you can choose to set an image from your library, upload a new photo, or set the image via URL link.

After you’ve made your selection, click “Set Featured Image”.