Show Featured Images on Post List

Let’s say you want to be sure every single post, in ever single post type, has a featured image. And you know someone might forget but you don’t want to have to open up every damn post to see.

There are a lot of answers to this problem, and I love that there’s a plugin that will add in a Featured Image Column that shows a teeny featured image. But it wasn’t what I wanted. It was over kill.

All I needed was a simple check mark for if there was an image and an X if there wasn’t, and that would suit me fine. And I wanted the column to be small, without a lot of fuss or folderol. I wanted something simple:

That gives me a fast overview of if everything is what I wanted and where I wanted.

The Code

The code itself is the most basic column code, with a little bit of magic to put it as the first column on the list. Since I want to show this on all post types, I used the generic functions.

/*
 * Show mark if featured image is set
 *
 * @since 1.1
 */

add_filter('manage_posts_columns', 'helf_fi_manage_posts_columns');
function helf_fi_manage_posts_columns( $columns ) {
	if ( !is_array( $columns ) ) $columns = array();
	$new_columns = array();

	foreach( $columns as $key => $title ) {
		if ( $key == 'title' ) $new_columns['featured_image'] = '<span class="dashicons dashicons-camera"></span>';
		$new_columns[$key] = $title;
	}

	return $new_columns;
}

add_action('manage_posts_custom_column', 'helf_fi_manage_posts_custom_column', 10, 2);
function helf_fi_manage_posts_custom_column( $column_name, $post_ID ) {
    if ($column_name == 'featured_image') {
        $post_featured_image = helf_fi_manage_column_check( $post_ID );
        $output = '<span class="dashicons dashicons-no"></span>';
        if ( $post_featured_image && $post_featured_image == true ) $output = '<span class="dashicons dashicons-yes"></span>';
        echo $output;
    }
}

function helf_fi_manage_column_check( $post_ID ) {
    $post_thumbnail_id = get_post_thumbnail_id( $post_ID );
    $post_thumbnail_img = false;
    if ( $post_thumbnail_id ) $post_thumbnail_img = true;
	return $post_thumbnail_img;
}

add_action( 'admin_print_scripts', 'helf_fi_admin_print_styles' );
function helf_fi_admin_print_styles(){
	echo '
	<style>
		th#featured_image,
		td.featured_image.column-featured_image {
			max-height: 25px;
			max-width: 25px;
			width: 25px;
			color: #444;
		}
		td.featured_image span.dashicons-no {
			color: #dc3232;
		}
		td.featured_image span.dashicons-yes {
			color: #46b450;
		}
		div#screen-options-wrap.hidden span.dashicons-camera {
			padding-top: 5px;
		}
	</style>';
}

Fork and enjoy!

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

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