Hello, I’ve tried to use a plugin that enables external url image as Featured image, but it doesn’t work with the theme. Is there a way to make it work? I’ve tried several plugins, right now I am referring to this plugin:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/featured-image-from-url/
Thanks in advanced.
We use “auto post thumbmnail pro” — works with all tagdiv themes
This plugin take the first image from the post, I’m talking about using external URL as featured image. Any workaround?
We use the plugin to load images from external URL — the first image in post — if it’s placed in the post we’re importing.
So, we have a network — we publish news on our mothership, then our sub sites pull the content via RSS, where the first image in post is coming from mothership; the plugin then generates a featured image and sets as featured in WP locally, on the satellite site.
As to “using external URL” — without the image being IN the post already, no idea.
And of course, be aware of copyright issues.
Check the wordpress.org plugin repository and try them out ?
I’ve tried a few plugins, they all give the same result. About copyrights issues – all images are legit, my aim is to reduce server load. I’m using http://cloudinary.com/ service. It’s a great service providing compression and CDN for your files (there is also a free plan), so instead of hosting your images on your local server, you can host them on the cloud server. In such a way you gain point in page speed, in cache and in server load time (noting that the Newspaper theme uses Lazy Load as well). If you are putting an image in your post, I recommend using this service. In my case, I want the featured image to be loaded from an external URL. Maybe eventually I will find something.
In our case we’re a 33 year old publishing firm with dedicated server, so no need for external service. We use mod_pagespeed and server side caching, which caches our images but also auto converts to bleeding edge formats like “webp” for Chrome and Android, from our highly optimized jpeg images done here in Photoshop.
But most folks don’t spend $700+ a month on dedicated box 🙂
Of course, in your case if a plugin makes a local featured image, it then adds it to the gallery so that WP can generate the thumbs, which are NOT done from external URL. So, that might defeat the purpose of what you’re trying to do. You would need to build some kind of custom CDN hook to load the image from CDN into your post, then the plugin we use would make THAT a featured image and generate the thumbs for local loading on indexes.
Sorry not a better answer …. 🙂
Oh I just hate those generated thumbs done by WordPress. Not only do the litter my media library and devour space, but also at some point they become messed up and in a while I get missing images in some posts. Of course I am not planning on spending so much money like you’ve mentioned. I try to keep things simple 🙂
