Best ways to Hide Featured Images on Individual Posts in WordPress

April 29. 2022

Even though featured images are tucked away in the WordPress blog post editor’s sidebar, they are an essential option. Why? Well, continue reading and you’ll find out everything you need to know about featured images in WordPress – from how to use them best on your blogs to ways to hide them on individual posts. You’ll see that, as with anything else WordPress-related, it’s pretty easy to comprehend. Plus, you can always count on the WP Full Care team to help you with anything you potentially get stuck with. Now, let’s get to work!

What are featured images and why are they important?

If you’re running a successful WordPress blog you probably know that adding and optimizing a featured image is a must. But what are featured images and why are they important? The WordPress featured image is the image that appears on blog post list pages, and/or at the top of individual blog posts.  You can assign a featured image to each post to serve as a header and to represent it on archive and search pages. Simply put, a featured image is an image you choose to represent a specific blog post.

Adding a featured image is very easy. Simply select “Set featured image” (located on the right), and then upload a new image or select a file from your Media Library. Like any other image, you may add captions to featured images, ‘alt’ text, and descriptions.

A featured image doesn’t usually appear in the body of the article. However, the way your featured image is displayed depends on your active theme. Nonetheless, it will most likely appear in the header of your article. As a result, a featured image in WordPress is critical, as it is the first thing readers will see and will set the tone for the entire post.

Keep in mind that it’s important to include a featured image on every page of any site that produces fresh information on a regular basis. Also, because these images will have a significant impact on the visual style (and even the performance) of your site, it is worthwhile to devote some time to properly selecting and preparing them.

How to effectively use featured images on your WordPress website?

WordPress gives you the option to choose any image you like for your featured images. Given their prominence, though, it’s best to be strategic with how you employ them. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective methods for making the most of each WordPress featured image.

Three tips for adding featured images in WordPress

• There are plenty of places to find great photos to use for your featured images. You have two options – paying for photographs from a stock site or using Creative Commons-licensed content. The second option is probably the best way to go as these images are free to use and you can customize them with your own branding and modifications. Just don’t forget to credit the source!
• Make sure to keep your featured images consistent. Think about it – these photos make up a big percentage of your site’s media because each article has its own WordPress featured image. Because it may appear in several locations across your site, think about how they can serve to represent your entire website. The image style you choose should represent the branding and tone of your website. You can also focus on using specific colors or concentrate on a specific theme. Also, you’ll want to choose a uniform size for each featured image. It’s totally up to you what this is, though we recommend choosing dimensions with a wider width than height (as this tends to look better, especially on mobile devices).
• Featured photos can eventually make up a significant portion of your site’s media library. As a result, they may have an impact on the performance of your website as well. However, having a lot of huge, high-quality photographs on your site can cause it to load slowly. The solution is to optimize each featured image in WordPress before submitting it to your site (or during the upload process). It will be ‘lighter’ as a result, and less likely to slow down your page speeds. Plus, with the right software, you can easily reduce photographs without sacrificing quality.

Do you want to hide featured images on individual posts on your WordPress website?

In some cases, you might not want to add a featured image to your post. However, some themes will default to using post attachments as the featured image. So depending on the theme you use, this means that even if you don’t specify one, it might still display a featured image. Or, you might simply want to hide featured images from some blog posts to prevent them from appearing cluttered. Whatever your reasons are, there is a very simple way to hide featured images on individual posts in WordPress. The solution lies in using Conditionally Display Featured Image plugin.

After installing and activating the plugin, you’re good to go. There are no plugin settings to mess with but you can simply navigate to Posts » All Posts and select the post you want to read. Then, immediately beneath the featured picture on the post edit screen, you’ll find a box that says “Display featured image in posts lists only, conceal on singular views“. Simply check this box to hide the featured image and then click the ‘Update’ button to save your changes.

After that, you may go back to your post and see that the featured image has been hidden. Even if the post has a featured image assigned to it, it will not appear. Keep in mind that the feature image is not deleted or unset by this plugin. It merely hides it from your WordPress website’s front end. Simply edit the post and uncheck the hide featured picture option if you ever want to see the featured image again.

The bottom line

We hope this article helped you understand what featured images are, why they are important, and how to hide them on individual posts in WordPress. As you can see, the solution is very simple and even suitable for WordPress beginners so we’re sure you’ll tackle it with no issues at all. On the other hand, you can always count of professional WordPress website maintenance team to take care of it for you in case you want to focus on something else.