How to hide the Thumb Placeholder

On my site, only scattered articles have featured images.

I do NOT want the thumb placholder to show up when there is no feature image. Rather, I want no image to show up. I just want the text to show up.

How can I disable thumb placeholders entirely?

Any ideas here? Really need to get rid of thumb placeholders.

I’m a coder, so if the solution is CSS or javascript, that’s fine, but I notice there’s no css class for no-thumb. It just acts as if it’s the actual featured image.

Would love some suggestions.

Thanks Vlad. I’ve been noticing that. I tracked it down somewhat:

There is code in the PHP file /wp-content/plugins/td-composer/legacy/common/wp_booster/td_module.php
(or alternately /wp-content/plugins/td-cloud-library/includes/tdb_module.php, where similar code lives).

$custom_placeholder = td_util::get_option('tds_thumb_placeholder');

That thumb placeholder appears to get assigned, in the case of no featured image, on this line:

} else if( $custom_placeholder != '' && $css_image === true ) {
    $td_temp_image_url[0] = $custom_placeholder;

Then the assignment appears to be used here to render the thumbnail:

$buffy .= '<span class="entry-thumb td-thumb-css" data-type="css_image" data-img-url="' . $td_temp_image_url[0] . '" ' . $retina_image . ' ></span>';

That option tds_thumb_placeholder is being defined in the wordpress database. It’s in the wp_options table, in the rows with option_name td_011 and td_011_settings. Unfortunately, the option_value for those two items are PHP serialized data, and contain an insane 2,500 rows of information (all inside one single database cell — over 256kb of data).

Trying to unserialize the data using online tools has proven fruitless.

I’m thinking of writing additional PHP code near those if statements to simply add a class like “no-thumb” when there is no featured image. Of course overwriting plugin code is a challenge, as there’s no such thing as a “child plugin” the way there is a “child theme”, but I’m sure there’s a way to do that without risking issues when the plugin is updated.

I built the whole site in about 4 hours, then I’ve spent 4+ hours trying to hide just that one thumbnail. Can it be added as a feature request to be able to turn off thumbnail placeholders? I see from searching around that I’m not the first person to ask.

Cheers,
Michael

• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.

To fix this, I’ve edited the plugin directly under plugins -> plugin editor (WARNING to anyone else reading this, if tagDiv updates their plugin, there is a risk they will overwrite this change and you’ll have to make it again).

Then I chose tagDiv composer from the dropdown on the top right and clicked apply. I navigated to legacy -> common -> booster and clicked on td_module.php. Then I clicked into the code area and typed cmd-f (ctrl-f for windows) and searched for this:

class="td-image-wrap

I replaced that line that starts with $buffy, with the following code:

	            
                if ( is_null( $this->post_thumb_id ) ) {
                    $no_thumbnail = 'no-thumb';
                } else {
                    $no_thumbnail = '';
                }
                $buffy .= '<a>href . '" rel="bookmark" class="td-image-wrap ' . $no_thumbnail . $video_popup_class . '" title="' . $this->title_attribute . '" ' . $video_popup_data . '>';

I now have a “no-thumb” class which shows up then there is no thumbnail, and am able to use that to hide the thumbnail anchor (“a”) element entirely via CSS.

• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.
• This reply was modified 5 years by honestdish.