Automatic Excerpt Thumbnails

Hopefully this new bit of functionality will be a welcome feature easing the process of posting for all authors…

Until now authors have had to hand-craft their Excerpt text and then go through an annoying process of inserting a thumbnail image and cutting & pasting that image in to the Excerpt. Now none of that is needed, it’s all automatic with one or two simple steps as you write the main body of the post.

You should notice on the Add New Post page, the one you use to create your reports, that there is a new box, Featured Image. Normally it will appear at the bottom of the righthand column below the Categories, Tags, and Post Series boxes.

The steps are:

1. The first few sentences of the main text will automatically be used as the Excerpt. However, this can be a little too long for a good teaser. So, optionally, there are two ways to make it shorter or more teasing…
• Use the more button (with the HTML editor , or with the Visual editor ) to set the point within the body text where the Excerpt should end. Just click this button at the point in the body text where you want the Excerpt to stop. It will insert <!-- more -->, don’t worry, that does’t appear in the post it just tells WordPress to truncate the Excerpt at that point.
• Continue to hand-craft teasers in the Excerpt box. Although the thumbnail image is no longer required…
2. When uploading images to include in reports note the new link Use as featured image next to the Insert into Post button. This link automatically sets the thumbnail for this image as the thumbnail for the Excerpt. When you get back to the Add New Post page you’ll notice the Featured Image box also shows that thumbnail. This is a good visual clue that the thumbnail has been properly set.

That’s it, follow these two easy steps and leave the Excerpt blank (or with just a short piece of teaser text). Hopefully you’ll agree, this is much easier than it used to be!

😀

Lastly, if you decide you don’t like your choice of thumbnail and want to change it for one of the other pictures you’ve uploaded, or you forgot to click the Use as featured image link when uploading and inserting pictures in the report, the Featured Image box provides quick links to:

• Remove the Featured Image when one is set that you don’t like.
• Set the Featured Image from one of the uploaded pictures.

That’s it, give me a shout if you need more help… :geek: