Featured Image From URL

Help

For more information, refer to FAQ and screenshots.

Report a Bug or Suggest an Improvement

Suggestions for improvement are always welcome. Just send an email to support@featuredimagefromurl.com and your request can be available in the next release. But if you want to report a bug, please provide as many details as possible such as plugin version, screenshots, JS errors on browser console, PHP errors in debug file, domain etc. The most common related problem is that the images aren't shown on public area. And in 90% of times it's caused because of errors in another plugin.

Auto Set Featured Image: configuration

Perfect for external posts, this option allows to use the first image from a post/page/product content as featured image. It will happen when you click on Publish/Update button.

use the first image as featured image
hide the first image from content
overwrite the existing external featured image

Custom Post Types

Featured Image from URL is preconfigured to work with only one Custom Post Type (WooCommerce Product). But you also can use this plugin with other ones. For that, you just need to know the correct Custom Post Type names and fill the fields below. Please, let me know if you need more than 5 inputs here.

CSS Style

Here you can define a CSS style to be applied to all external featured images. Usage example:

width: 100%; border-radius: 8px; border: 1px solid #ddd; padding: 5px;

If this new FREE feature is useful to you, please cherish my work. Give FIFU a 5-star rating!

Default External Featured Image

Here you can define the URL of a default external featured image that will be shown when you create/update a post/page/product without an internal/external featured image.

Fake Internal Featured Image

Even though FIFU works fine with the most of themes/plugins, some of them are not able to show the external featured image if there is no internal featured image associated to your post/page/product. Enabling the toggle below, a symbolic empty file will be added to your Media Library as an attempt to overcome that limitation.

Featured Image Column

The plugin adds a new column "FIFU" (Featured Image from URL) to your table of posts/pages/products in admin area. Below you can choose the height (px) of the image in the column. To disable that, just uncheck "FIFU" in the Screen Options.

Featured Image in Content

It will sound crazy, but some themes don't show the Featured Image on the posts or pages. If it is your case and you would like to show the Featured Image there, just enable the toggle. The Featured Image will appear at the beginning of the content, before the text.

Hide Featured Media

Enable the toggle if you want to hide the external featured image/video/slider on posts/pages but keeping its visibility on home.

on page
on post

Lazy Load

Enabling this feature the images/videos won't be loaded until user scrolls to them. So it will make your home/shop load faster.

Priority

Enable the toggle below to prioritize the internal image rather than the external one, if both exist.

prioritize the internal image

Social Tags

Featured Image from URL provides social tags to share the external images on the social networks. Here you can enable/disable this feature.

WooCommerce

You can disable the product lightbox and zoom here once these features are only compatible with the premium version.

lightbox
zoom

WP All Import

You can use Featured Image from URL with WP All Import plugin. For that, use the custom field fifu_image_url.

The other custom fields supported by FIFU are listed below, in the section WP REST API > Plugin Fields.

Premium feature

But if you have a list of URLs delimited by "|", it's possible to use that with the custom field fifu_list_url. In this case, the first image will be considered the featured image and the others will be in the product image gallery. For sliders, use fifu_slider_list_url.

Auto Set Featured Image: apply to all

Premium feature

Enable that to update all your posts/pages/products applying the configuration above. Very useful if you have hundreds of them and want to set the first image as featured image for all. To repeat/continue the process enable the toggle again. It can take several minutes and you can monitor the progress here. It can't be undone, so make a backup.

To schedule this process (hourly, daily etc), you can use the Hook fifu_event with your favorite cron event plugin. I like WP Control.

posts per second (high values can bring down your database)
ignore posts that already have an external featured image
update all your posts/pages/products now
Status:

Auto Set Product Category Images

Premium feature

Enable the toggle below to set one external image to each product category. The image will be chosen among the external product images from that category.

set category images

Crop images to the same size

Premium feature

If you are not happy with the different sizes of external featured images on your home/shop, enable the toggle below to crop them to the same size.

crop images


P.S.: if the crop doesn't work, use a Selector to inform where is the group of external images that you want to crop.

inform a Selector

Examples of valid selectors: #products (if the element id="products"), .my-post-area (if the element class="my-post-area")

External Featured Videos

Premium feature

The default value applied to the videos is "100%" and it usually works fine. However, here you can define the max size (px, cm etc) of the featured videos at different screens and the ratio for these videos as well.

Ratio:
e.g.: 1, 2, 3...
Margin Bottom:
e.g.: 10px, 1cm...
Vertical Margin:
e.g.: 10px, 1cm...
Archive:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Category:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Home:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Page:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Post:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Product:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...
Shop:
e.g.: 300px, 8cm...


External Thumbnails (Flickr Integration): Your Website Faster Than Ever

Premium feature

Do you know Flickr?

  1. It's free;
  2. Offers 1000 GB of space;
  3. It's dedicated to store and provide images, probably faster than the most of servers;
  4. Creates automatic copies of your images in many different sizes.

How does Featured Image From URL take advantage of Flickr?

Smaller the images, faster your site.

So the plugin will load the images from Flickr in the exactly size your site needs. And the result is...

The images will be shown with the best quality and the shortest time possible.

Getting Flickr URL

You just need to get one URL (Square 75). Use that to fill the External Featured Image field of your post, page or product. The plugin will handle this URL to provide the image in different sizes.



Choose the maximum image size for each screen

Archive: 
Cart: 
Category: 
Home: 
Lightbox: 
Page: 
Post: 
Product: 
Shop: 

Hover Effects

Premium feature

Choose one among 18 hover effects to be applied to all external featured images of your posts on your main page.


Meta boxes: External Galleries and Slider

Premium feature

Here you can define the number of fields you will have on the editor for galleries and slider. A huge amount of fields can interfere in the save action time.


Product Categories Grid

Premium feature

Allows you to use use external images/videos on Product Categories Grid.

Slider Settings

Premium feature

Once you have added the first external image on a post/page/product, the slider meta box will show up. Adding more external images, you have a slider and you can define its settings here.

fade effect
pause autoplay on hover
show prev/next buttons
start to play automatically
time between each transition (in ms)
transition duration (in ms)

Validate Images

Premium feature

Allows to check image URLs and, when an image is not found, its URL is not saved. However, the validation can make the saving time too long. It is not integrated with Auto Set Featured Image or WP Rest API features yet.

Video Auto Play

Premium feature

This option allows to play a video on "mouseover" and pause it on "mouseout".

for YouTube videos
for Vimeo videos

Video Thumbnail

Premium feature

Enable the toggle below to show the video thumbnail instead of the video on home/shop.

WooCommerce Variable Product

Premium feature

Allows to use external images in variations of WooCommerce Variable Products.

WP REST API

Premium feature

GET/POST
Shop http://yourdomain.com/wp-json/wc/v2/products
Blog http://yourdomain.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts


GET/PUT/DELETE
Shop http://yourdomain.com/wp-json/wc/v2/products/{id}
Blog http://yourdomain.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/{id}
Key Key Key
Image fifu_image_url
Alt fifu_image_alt
Video fifu_video_url
Image Gallery fifu_image_url_0 fifu_image_url_1 ...
Video Gallery fifu_video_url_0 fifu_video_url_1 ...
Slider fifu_slider_image_url_0 fifu_slider_image_url_1 ...

Checking compatibility between your theme () and FIFU Premium...

as Blog as Shop
featured image: yes product image: yes
product gallery: yes
featured video: yes product video:
featured slider: yes product slider:
To use FIFU Premium + WooCommerce + theme, you will need to follow the steps* below:
1) Open this file:
woocommerce/includes/abstracts/abstract-wc-product.php

2) Find this line:
public function get_gallery_image_ids( $context = 'view' ) {

3) Add this line immediately below that one:
$tmp = array(); $i = 0; while ($url = get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), "fifu_image_url_" . $i, true)) $tmp[] = $i++; if ($i > 0) return $tmp;

*you will need to redo that always you decide to update your WooCommerce version.

FIFU is developed using Storefront, the official WooCommerce theme. So all the plugin features are compatible with that without any additional steps.

If your theme isn't flexible enough to work with external images, please consider to move to Storefront. Check the Live Preview.

About Featured Image from URL Premium

1) "How to get support?"

You can inform any problem related to the Premium version in the email above. It will be solved as soon as possible and without any cost.

2) "Which plugins are compatible with Premium version?"

WooCommerce, WP All Import, Monarch, Frontend Publishing and others. If you intend to use the Premium version with a specific plugin, try to test with the free version first. Or you can ask me if they are compatible.

3) "Are there the known incompatibility issues?"

Themes: some WooCommerce themes aren’t flexible enough to work with Videos and Sliders. To know if your theme is compatible with those features, please take a look on “Checking compatibility” area, here in FIFU settings.

4) "Can I get my money back later?"

With the exception of rare situations, no. But don't worry about that. You will still have the best support and if, after your complete cooperation, I'm not able to solve your issue, I may refund you.

5) "How to get the Premium version?"

(US$ 50 or more, please) and receive the Premium version by email within 12 hours.

About The Author

Hi! I'm Marcel Jacques Machado. Graduated in Computer Science and postgraduated in Deep and Machine Learning, I work as Software Engineer for 10 years. I already worked with C, Python, Shell Script and other programming languages and technologies. Nowadays, I develop web applications in Brazil using Java. About PHP, this plugin, Featured Image From URL, has been a great pratical experience.