How to Add Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feed

Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feed. If you use an RSS feed on your WordPress website, you’ll notice that the featured image isn’t included in your RSS feed’s posts by default. Having an RSS feed with images will enhance your syndication and may come in handy later because marketing tools like Mailup, Aweber, MailChimp use RSS feeds to create newsletters. RSS really means simple syndication.

Basically, RSS is used for various purposes. Millions of users use RSS feeds to track their favorite websites. Normally, people save web content from a relevant website to a feed reader such as Inoreader, Feedly, etc. so that they can read it later and in an organized format and get the latest updates from the blog from which they have subscribed.

In this brief guide, I will show you how to show your featured image in WordPress RSS feed using a plugin and without a plugin.

Read Also: How to Submit your website to Google News

Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feed (Manually)

If you are familiar with modifying your functions.php file, you can use the code below to display the prominent Featured images in your RSS feed.

  1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard.
  2. Go to Appearance >> Theme Editor.
  3. Click on function.php
  4. Add given code in the bottom of function.php file.
  5. That’s All, Click on Update file.

You can also add this code by using FTP.

Add Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feeds
/**
 * Featured image to RSS Feed - SoftCodeOn.
 */
function featuredtoRSS($content) {
global $post;
if ( has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) ){
$content = '<div>' . get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID, 'medium', array( 'style' => 'margin-bottom: 15px;' ) ) . '</div>' . $content;
}
return $content;
}
 
add_filter('the_excerpt_rss', 'featuredtoRSS');
add_filter('the_content_feed', 'featuredtoRSS');

Copy the above code and paste it into your function.php file. If you don’t know what you are doing with the function first make a backup.

Show Featured Image in WordPress RSS Feed (Plugin)

If coding is not your thing and you are looking for a WordPress RSS feed plugin with images then there is an option. Get Featured Images instantly for free in your RSS feed. The most comfortable way to show featured images in an RSS feed is to install Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp.

Featured Image for Mailchimp
Featured Image plugin

Be sure to click the ‘Save Changes‘ button when you have made your desired changes.

This is great if you want an easy way to add images to your WordPress site’s RSS feed. If you have any problems with adding images to the RSS feed, feel free to comment below.

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