How to display featured image on Tumblr

First, thanks for this structured post and the detail.

So, a few points.

Featured images are only supported on posts that have the “Image” WordPress Post Format selected. If your post (or custom post type) doesn’t have a Post Formats box, then the default format of “Standard” will be used, which means that Tumblr Crosspostr will create a Text post on Tumblr, not a Photo post.

So, first, if your custom post type does not support Post Formats, then the only type of Tumblr post that Tumblr Crosspostr will be able to translate your WordPress custom post type into is a text post. To fix this, contact the developer of the plugin that provided the custom post type and ask them to make it crosspostable using formats other than the default. (There are instructions for doing this on the Other Notes page of this plugin.) Unfortunately, this is not something that can be changed without the editing the other plugin’s code, since Tumblr Crosspostr has no way to interface with that code directly.

To answer your question:

I’ve found a message by you in a topic saying: “In other words, your post must include at least one <img src=”…” alt=”” /> HTML element for Tumblr Crosspostr to find.” Can you tell me more information about that? When I am displaying the featured image on the single.php, I display the featured image there and works.

Tumblr Crosspostr is theme-agnostic, meaning that it doesn’t matter what your WordPress theme displays, Tumblr Crosspostr doesn’t even consider it. It only prepares data for and sends data to Tumblr’s API, not your theme.

In an earlier version of Tumblr Crosspostr, featured images were not supported at all, so there had to be at least one <img> tag in your post body for Tumblr Crosspostr to sucessfully create a Photo post on Tumblr. In the current version of Tumblr Crosspostr, the plugin will still look for an <img> tag in your post body, but if it doesn’t find one, it will use the Featured Image.

Hope this helps. ??

Everything went perfect, but checking it today, something has changed. The image does not show anymore, only the a tags. Do you know why?

See: https://i60.tinypic.com/35kiipt.png

Noticed something weird: sometimes it appears, sometimes it doesn’t. So the a tag is always there, but only sometimes appears the img inside it. Why is that?

Nevermind, it was from me. Sorry about that.

Hey,

I’m not sure about this: Are the featured images still only being synced to Tumblr for posts with the image format, or should it work for standard format posts as well now, since version 0.7.19?

Thanks,
Fabian

Are the featured images still only being synced to Tumblr for posts with the image format, or should it work for standard format posts as well now, since version 0.7.19?

Nothing’s changed. Only posts with the Image post format cross-post images. That’s always been how this plugin works, and still is how this plugin works.

Thanks for the quick reply. May I ask what the reason for this is?

That’s how I designed it.

I understand this. My question was, without criticizing, concerning the reason for your decision to design it that way.

Fabian, I’m not offended, but this is a support forum, not a discussion board. If you have a suggestion for an alternate design you feel would be an improvement, feel free to propose it on the Tumblr Crosspostr issue tracker on GitHub.

I agree, it’s offtopic here. So thanks for answering the original question.

Hey Meitar,

I’ve implemented an additional option to your plugin. It turns on or off a feature that crossposts using Tumblr’s post type “photo” instead of “text” for WordPress posts of the type “standard”. It works exactly like you have implemented it for the WordPress post type “image”/”gallery”, but in case there are no images in the post and it has no featured image either, it falls back to posting in “text” type to Tumblr.

If you are interested in adding it to your plugin, I can send the updated file, marked with comments where I placed new code, to you. It’s quick and simple, but it should work.

Fabian

Sorry, but no. When a user selects the “Standard” post format, they expect a standard post to be cross-posted, and that is what should happen. What you have implemented breaks the principle of least surprise. You are, of course, welcome to fork the plugin, as the code is open source, or to write your own plugin that uses this plugin’s provided filters to implement your changes in a portable and reliable manner.

I don’t think that users expect the standard posts to be crossposted without any images though. At least I, as a user, don’t. A good many blog posts contain images these days, especially a featured image, without exclusively being about the image (which is why they don’t have the “image” format assigned). I believe that this additional feature (that doesn’t take away anything, since it can be turned on and off and hence won’t force users to have images crossposted, but merely allows them to) might help some users.
No need to be sorry, though, as my problem is solved and my crossposting works the way I want it to now.

“Standard” posts are not posted without images, they are posted without a featured image, as a “Text” post on Tumblr, using HTML, which will display on Tumblr any images inserted to the WordPress post in exactly the same way as those images display on the WordPress post.