How to set post first image as featured image automatically

So using or choosing the image as featured image for post is another manual work we need to do. Info about. how to set post first image as featured image. We have SQL query for this.

From wordpress 3.0 version wordpress launched the feature called featured image. Many new wordpress themes are compatible with new wordpress version. So using or choosing the image as featured image for post is another manual work we need to do.

Many old wordpress website holder or blogger is having issue with this functionality. What they want is when they create the post they haven’t set the featured image, but they would like the featured image to default to the image that has been included in the post.

Some wordpress always use the first image as featured image but old post was not updated with featured image. They need to do manual work to set the featured image. I also faced same issue.

After doing some R&D I found the solution. If you want to set the your posts first image as featured image then use my following code.

For using the code you need to open your mysql database command prompt or phpmysqladmin program and select your wordpress database and execute the following query in that.

insert into wp_postmeta (meta_value, meta_key, post_id) select DISTINCT(ID), post_type , post_parent from wp_psts where post_type= 'attachment' and post_parent !=0 and post_status='inherit';<br /><br />update wp_postmeta set meta_key = '_thumbnail_id' where meta_key='attachment'

Using above sql query you will be able to set the featured image to your old and new post from post content. If you are having any issues with using this sql then write to me.

How to set post first image as featured image automatically
How to set post first image as featured image automatically

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Purab

I am Purab from India, Software development is my profession and teaching is my passion. Programmers blog dedicated to the JAVA, Python, PHP, DevOps and Opensource Frameworks. Purab's Github Repo Youtube Chanel Video Tutorials Connect to on LinkedIn

15 thoughts on “How to set post first image as featured image automatically”

  1. Couldn’t this be a one liner?

    insert into wp_postmeta (meta_value,meta_key,post_id)
    select DISTINCT(ID),’_thumbnail_id’,post_parent
    from wp_posts
    where post_type= ‘attachment’
    and post_parent !=0
    and post_status=’inherit’;

  2. Couldn’t this be a one-liner?

    insert into wp_postmeta (meta_value,meta_key,post_id)
    select DISTINCT(ID),’_thumbnail_id’,post_parent
    from wp_posts
    where post_type= ‘attachment’
    and post_parent !=0
    and post_status=’inherit’;

  3. For those running WordPress in Windows environment….

    I used the MySQL workbench and added:

    USE ‘[your DB name here]’;

    before the code above. I hope this helps someone out.

  4. Very clever but as my friend said it just gets the post attachment.

    Is there a way of identifying the first img src value and assigning that to be the featured image? Obviously that makes it a bit trickier as the image needs to be downloaded from a remote site and uploaded as a featured image…

    Would be helpful for folks like me who need to assign featured images to nearly 600 imported blogger posts!

  5. Thanks,man this is very usefull and can save you a lot of time.I had a problem with the featured image because i can’t save it and this trick saved me! Thanks again!

  6. Thank you, this has been very helpful to me, but I think you need to update the code so it can work with copy/paste.

    You need to insert a semi-colon (;) at the end of the second command so can be executed properly.

    update wp_postmeta set meta_key = ‘_thumbnail_id’ where meta_key=’attachment’;

  7. How do you update this to work with a different image? Say your post doesn’t have any images on it but you wanted a featured image set to it anyway.

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