A little foible and how to handle it

When a WordPress Theme lacks the “Featured Image” option

My blog Cafe Ludwig is one of my oldest undertakings on WordPress. It has been around since June 2009. It uses the theme Quintus which is still being offered and described thus: A theme that has an old-style appeal with semi-academic graciousness and elegant typography. Who can be unimpressed by “semi-academic graciousness”? It’s a nice theme, I have used it for years. It suits this blog.

But much has changed in recent years. The ascendance of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones has made readability on those devices a high priority. Social media have become the places where notices need to be shown for posts to be noticed and read. Oh, and those notices have to include an image to be seen at all.

When sharing a link to a WordPress post the image that is displayed with it is the “Featured Image”. Newer themes provide that feature.

When using the Dashboard editor there is a setting in the right sidebar to select the “Featured Image”.

Sadly the Quintus theme, being old and feeble, does not support “Featured Image”. Without setting a featured image another image is grabbed, or even none. You have no controll on what image is passed to Facebook, or Twitter, or other sites.

So, setting a “Featured Image” is important even for themes that do not support that setting. It can be done!

Setting a “Featured Image” in themes without that support

So how do you set a “Featured Image” if the theme does not support that? Simple. Use the WordPress Reader in-browser editor. Go to wordpress.com. That gets you to the WordPress Reader. You may have to log in.

Click Write at the right of the top menu bar. Select your blog. You can start a new post or continue a saved draft. There, even for blog themes that do not support the “Feature Image” in the Dashboard editor, there will be an option to set and select the featured image.