How to Hide Featured Image in Post WordPress
Want to know how to hide the featured image post in WordPress? In this post we will highlight the most common options.
The featured image is a feature on WordPress themes that allows you to add a representative image for a post. The featured image appears next to or on top of the post heading on social media or the post list. However, depending on the type of theme you use, the featured image might also be seen on the post itself. It may also be seen on the popular posts or recent publications widget area.
Also read:
– How to edit Footer in WordPress
– How To Change WordPress Featured Image Size
To sum it up, the behavior and location of a featured image are largely affected by the chosen theme. But what if you do not want to show the featured image for specific posts or all posts on your website? You do not want to remove the featured image because it has its own significance which we will talk about later. So basically, this is what this article talks about and guides you through the process to hide featured images on WordPress posts.
Why is a Featured Image useful?
Featured Image or Thumbnail is not only a great appearance enhancement for your blog posts, but it also makes the plain blog post more visually engaging. Selecting an appropriate feature image covey idea to the readers about the post before they even begin reading. It helps your readers understand the content of blog posts better.
Moreover, if you are consistent with the type of your featured images, it will help you determine the overall visual style of the whole website. But like I said, featured images are more than just visual enhancements, they affect the traffic too.
According to research conducted by Optimind Technology, articles that have featured images generate up to 94% more traffic than the posts that don’t. This is a significant benefit coming from such a small feature. Also, including captions, keywords, and alt text on the featured image also boosts the website’s SEO.
Now you know that a small image near the blog posts is more important than you think. Apart from improving the overall tone of the entire website, it is essential for attracting more visitors, increase views, improve SEO and improve the value of your content.
Why hide Featured Image?
After mentioning all those crucial benefits of a featured image, why would I even talk about hiding it right? Hear me out, you will know why showing a featured image might not always be a good idea. Note that I said ‘hide’, not ‘disable’. Those are two different things.
Featured images do a lot to bring in a good amount of traffic to your page and your website, but using them incorrectly will do more harm than good. But how hard is it to add a relevant image to a post right? Well, it is a bit more complicated than your think. Using incorrect featured images will disorder the page and website.
This will make your whole website look cluttered and disorganized. When that happens, featured images will chase away potential traffic instead of bringing them in. Instead of feeling welcomed, your visitors will feel overwhelmed by the excessive use of featured images on your homepage and blog posts. They will give a strange appearance to your website too. in some cases, the featured image might not be formatted for a smaller screen so it might look too big.
Whatever your reason might be, you can hide feature images from WordPress posts. For the lucky ones, it is extremely easy. For those unlucky ones, you might need to do a bit more work to hide the featured image. There are themes that come with the option to hide feature images. If your theme doesn’t have that, there are other options.
How to hide featured images in WordPress posts?
If you think that hiding a featured image makes sense, then you can use the methods below to do so. Note that not all methods may work for you. Most of them will work, so you do not need to worry. Here we go.
Method 1: Using WordPress Theme
The option to add a featured image is controlled by the theme. Depending on the WordPress theme you’re using, there might be the option to hide the featured image instead of removing it. The good thing is, if you’re not using some ancient outdated WordPress theme on your website, there is a good chance that your theme has the option to hide the featured image. This is the easiest way and you will not need to read further if your theme has this option.
However, there is a slight problem. Depending on the theme, the option to hide the featured image might be in a different location. It is impossible to cover all the themes so you will have to find the feature yourself. Fortunately, most of the themes will have the option in a similar location. The steps below will help.
- Go to WordPress Dashboard.
- Go to Posts.
- Select All Posts.
- Click on the Edit option below the heading of the post you want to hide the featured image from.
- Find the Document tab below the Preview button.
- Go to Post Settings under the Document tab.
- Find and enable Disable Featured Image option.
The steps might not be the same on the theme you’re using. A simple Google search might cut down the hassle. Just search if the theme you’re using has the option to hide the featured image.
Method 2: Using Plugins
If you’re one of the unlucky ones who are using a theme with no option to hide featured images in WordPress posts, then this method is for you. Don’t worry, it is as easy as the previous method. You just need to use a 3rd party plugin. There are a couple of good plugins that’ll do the trick.
Hide Featured Image Plugin
Explore Hide Featured Image Plugin
This is one of the most popular plugins for the job with over 50 thousand active installations. You can simply search for the plugin on the WordPress repository, or follow this link
The plugin is straightforward and simple to use. There’s nothing that will confuse you. All you have to do is install the plugin and activate it. You will then find an additional option on the posts’ edit page. A new option to ‘Show/Hide Featured Image’ will be displayed. Just click on the check-box, save the post and you’re good to go. The plugin also has a Preview option.
You do not have to configure the plugin and it will not delete your featured image but just hides it from the frontend. If you ever change your mind, you can un-hide the featured image by simply following the same steps but instead on check the box, you uncheck it. Hide Featured Image plugin supports all popular post types and also comes with support for custom post types.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with this plugin. It has not been updated in over 3 years. As much as I like this plugin, it is not wise to use a plugin that has not been updated in over a year. Over 50% of the WordPress vulnerabilities are because of plugins that are outdated or badly coded. You can use this plugin but I can’t recommend it.
Conditionally Display Featured Image Plugin
Explore Conditionally Display Featured Image Plugin
Good thing there are alternatives to the previously mentioned plugin. The name of the plugin might be a hassle to say, but its usability is as simple as it can get. And as this plugin is updated frequently, it will be compatible with the latest WordPress version and would be a risk to your website’s security.
To get started, you will need to install the plugin from WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New. After it is installed, activate it and you’re done. To use it, you will need to go to the ‘Post and Pages’ section, click on Edit under the heading of your choice. Inside the editing page, you will see a new option that says “Display featured image in post lists only, hide on singular views”. That is exactly what this plugin does. It shows the featured image in the post list but will hide it on the singular view. You will find the checkbox on the Document tab under Featured Image.
Quick Featured Images
Explore Quick Featured Images Plugin
For some reason, if none of the aforementioned plugins work for you, this plugin might. If I’m being honest, this is the best plugin of the lot anyway. But the reason why this plugin is listed at the last is that it doesn’t hide featured images, but makes it extremely convenient to manage them. It is exactly what the developers say, a Swiss army knife of managing featured images. Install it, activate it, and use it from inside the Posts section.
What makes it stand out is its ability to set, replace, and remove featured images in bulk. There are filters you can configure to make the plugin work exactly how you intended. You can determine presets for setting featured images automatically and remove the database of featured images with a single click. The plugin also offers a pro version with additional options like including videos and custom post types.
Hide Featured Image On All Single Page/Post
Explore Hide Featured Image On All Single Page/Post Plugin
This plugin is extremely lightweight and gets the job done perfectly. This plugin lets you hide all the featured images on pages and posts. It doesn’t modify your post in any way. It only removes the theme’s capability of accessing the featured image when loading the page. Even if the theme you’re using shows featured images in search results, post pages, category lists, etc. the plugin will still work. The plugin has no settings page, it just does its thing.
WP Hide Show Featured Image
Explore WP Hide Show Featured Image Plugin
Another easy-to-use plugin to hide featured images is ‘WP hide show featured image’. It is easy to install and use. when activated, you can see the plugin’s Settings page inside WordPress Dashboard > Settings. This plugin will let you hide featured images from all the posts and pages, hide the admin toolbar, remove the “Howdy” text, and remove the WordPress logo from the top left corner. Just enable the option you want and save the settings. That is all you need to know about this plugin.
Method 3: Using CSS
If none of the above methods work then you will need to get your hands dirty and hide the featured image manually. Follow the steps below:
- Open WordPress Admin panel.
- Go to Appearance.
- Click on Customize.
- Select Additional CSS.
- Copy and paste the following code:
.single .entry-content img {
display: none;
}
If you want to hide the featured image for a particular post, use the following code. Remember to replace “post-111” with the post ID of the post you’re hiding the featured image from.
.post-111 .post-image {
display: none;
}
To remove featured image from homepage, use the following code:
body.home .entry-thumbnail {
display: none;
}
Use Multiple Featured Image For Single Post
Not all of you might have a use for this, but if you think displaying multiple featured images for a single post instead of hiding it might benefit you, then you’ll be glad to know that you can do that easily. There are a couple of plugins you can use to add this functionality.
Dynamic Featured Image
Explore Dynamic Featured Image Plugin
This free plugin lets you do exactly what the same suggests. You can use this plugin to add multiple featured images to any of your posts, pages, or custom post types. This plugin comes with an interface that lets you add multiple thumbnails easily. There is no limit on how many thumbnails you are allowed to add.
Multiple Featured Images
Explore Multiple Featured Images Plugin
If you want to add multiple thumbnails to your posts, then Multiple Featured Images is the plugin to rely on. This simple and extremely easy-to-use plugin lets you enable multiple thumbnails for all post types including custom post types and WooCommerce. There is no limit on how many thumbnails you are allowed to add, it multilingual, supports shortcodes, and comes with a widget for showing thumbnails in the sidebar and more.
Multiple Post Thumbnail
Explore Multiple Post Thumbnail Plugin
This plugin is pretty straightforward. It does what it’s supposed to do and that’s it. You can add multiple thumbnails to any post using this plugin. Make sure you register the featured image for the type of post you are using it for.
How to Optimize Featured Images
It is crucial to have optimized featured images. Why? Because it affects the loading time of your entire website. If the featured images on your website are large in size, the website will take time to load it all. This will result in a poor user experience and your visitors might go away before even getting in. This is why optimizing featured images and all the other images on your website is important. Below are the few plugins you can use to optimize images on your website.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
Explore ShortPixel Image Optimizer Plugin
This plugin is free and simple to use. ShortPixel Image Optimizer uses lossy as well as lossless image compression technology to optimize any type of image file. You just have to install it and forget about it; it will do its job. You can also use this plugin to convert images into WebP and AVIF, automatically convert to JPG to decrease image size, convert CMYK to RGB, and more.
Imagify
With over 500k active downloads, Imagify can optimize and compress all your images in just a click. The images will maintain their quality too. It comes with 3 different levels of compressions – normal mode for lossless compression, aggressive mode for lossy compression, and ultra mode for strongest lossy compression. It also has a backup feature to restore images to original quality if you change your mind.
Smush
Smush will optimize all images, enable lazy load, resize images, compress images, and ultimately decrease the load time of your website. This plugin will scan for all the images on your website and library and compress them. Smush can compress up to 50 images at once. You can also configure it to automatically optimize the images.
Image optimization & Lazy Load by Optimole
Explore Image optimization & Lazy Load by Optimole Plugin
Optimole is fully automated, supports all image types, supports Retina images, and makes images smaller without reducing the quality. It also comes with lazy loading and support page builders. The features go on and on. All you need to be concerned about is its image optimization capability, which works perfectly of course.
Conclusion – How to Hide Featured Image in Post WordPress
Ultimately, it all comes down to your and your decision to hide the featured images from all your posts and pages, or from specific ones. You’re here reading this article so you must be looking for an option to hide the featured image.I’ve presented you with a couple of options on how you can successfully hide the featured image from a WordPress post.
Since removing the featured image has consequences, hiding it is the best course of action if you feel like it is cluttering your website and making it look unorganized. Maybe it is not going too well with the theme you just bought. A featured image is crucial, and most of the time you will want to let it stay visible. But for whatever reasons you want to hide it, I hope we helped.