Thanks

I have been invited to provide content for a travel site and basically they take information from the feed and then if people are interested they click through to my blog. But the first 55 words of the post may not be the best introduction to the topic, and I am hoping I can supply a better summary in feed form (without having to rewrite all my existing posts).

I'm getting ready to head out shortly myself, so I'll give this a peek again on Monday. I should be able to piece the rest together.

Oddly enough I'm not seeing the shortened version in some of the places I go to try to resubscribe, nor do I see the image. Then again, I wonder if I have to tag the image specially or not, I just dumped the straight URL to the image.

You can make a draft post with the custom text and image in it. Then copy the code from the text editor to paste into your excerpt module. You cannot use embeds or shortcodes, but images work perfectly.

All of these are enabled
Show on screen
Likes and Shares Categories Tags Format Featured Image Excerpt Send Trackbacks Discussion Comments Slug Author Revisions Writing Helper

If it does not appear, then you go to top right of your screen and click "screen options" to click on the "excerpts" module.

So how would I go about doing this? I opened up one of my posts with the featured image, and then I expanded my screen options and checked the box that says "excerpt".

Now I have the excerpt post box visible. I can put my custom text (I'll just dump everything up to my "more" tag. In here.

For the image, since the generated HTML isn't present, do I need to pull up the media library and find the URL they give for that image to dump it in, or is there another way?

I see this as a handy workaround for now, but if I wind up posting from a mobile device, I'd be out of luck yes?

One can specify which images appear in feeds and also which appear in emails to subscribers by using the custom excerpt function. You can choose what which and how to send out the feed via custom excerpts. None of this is documented in the Support articles.

While the custom excerpt function is only available in a few themes for the front page display, and available for some others for display in archives and categories, from my experience it has worked in many many many themes on my test sites for what goes out as feeds for WordPress.com sites.

I've not tested this for every theme, but can you confirm that what I'm saying is true (as my tests indicate it is so), and would this be a useful bit of information in the support documents.

I have answered many questions on this topic of choosing an image in this forum and believe many others would be happy to know how to do it.

Where might I go to make a suggestion to the dev team along these lines?

You just did. :) I've recorded it as a suggestion—actually adding to another request, so you know you're not the first one to suggest it.

Thanks for the debugging info to help track this down easily and the suggestion.

I think it would be beneficial to users (especially since featured images are becoming more and more commonplace in usage) to have the featured image included in the rss feed.

Where might I go to make a suggestion to the dev team along these lines?

Thanks all for your help!

So it's up to you—if the image is essential to you as part of the feed, you might be better off putting it into the post content instead of using it as a featured image.

The issue I'm having is #2. Features images are not appearing in the feed. I took a stab over at newsblur as well and it seems to not work their either...

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s34/sh/773c12a3-6551-4fb0-912f-3cd4d8837881/76e33383c627422380e265f6e679c576

It could be I'm confusing things here too. Whenever I post just an image, or for my old articles in which I posted an image to it and typed up my article, that image would should up as the "preview" image in the RSS feed. I'd see it in Feedly or Netvibes, or elsewhere.

However, now that I'm using featured images, the featured image is not showing up as my "preview" image in my RSS feed and I've been trying with various tools just to make sure its not something with App X's way of handling feeds.

I hope this helps. Thanks for your time.

[:: Sean ::]

1. Posts with featured images are not appearing in feed or ...
2. Featured images are not appearing in feed?

Thanks. My guess is it's not related to the theme, but we can investigate.

The most recent article in question is this one:

http://dillieodigital.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/a-fresh-perspective-two-years-and-counting-as-a-remote-worker/

The image is using the featured image and is a large one. While the post itself only renders it at 604 pixels, the original uploaded image was larger and you can see that if you go to the "raw" url

http://dillieodigital.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/wp_20130604_001.jpg

I did a fresh "read" of my rss file using Feedly to make sure nothing old was cached. Sure enough there are some images missing:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s34/sh/f964824a-c62f-4b0e-aa35-b0b507780771/45e6ec5116a396ebced6ffe34f2d4218

I also tested in Google Reader

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s34/sh/5976d9cb-89d6-46c2-b877-99ac936a6357/b0215b4ae84125bf5b795b6f8bc36835

I even did a quick test in Netvibes with similar results.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s34/sh/54d2c36b-b166-4647-baab-85fefa866d5e/cdd3f306aee60e70dcd9de6105f350c8

Hopefully this helps. Thanks!

[:: Sean ::]

After closer inspection, it appears that any posts that are using the Featured Image feature (and only the featured image) are not showing up in the RSS feed.

Is this a glitch to just the 2013 theme, or something I'm missing in general? Thanks!

[:: Sean ::]