Automatically make the first post image the feature image

[Tracey]

I'm creating my first custom child theme for a friend of mine with a 5 year old blog. Her old theme has never supported "feature image".

How can I modify the child theme to ...
(a) automatically make the first image of all existing posts the feature image
(b) continue to make the first image of future posts the feature image, unless she chooses to use the feature image functionality

Thanks in advance!

(BTW - I'm working in a dev environment offline so I don't have a URL to share at this point.)

[Brad Dalton]

Genesis will do this if no featured image is added, it looks for the first image attachment for the post.

It won't add it to the featured image meta box but it will display it in archives when the Genesis > Theme Settings > Content Archive settings are configured to display the featured image.

@uses genesis_get_image_id() Pull an attachment ID from a post, if one exists.

//* Else if the first (default) image attachment is the fallback, use its id
	elseif ( 'first-attached' === $args['fallback'] ) {
		$id = genesis_get_image_id( $args['num'], $args['post_id'] );
	}

---

Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[MurrinMedia]

I'd like to solve the original problem on this!

I have a blog for a friend with 200 posts. All posts have no featured images, but they all have what is considered the featured image, at the top of each post.

I'd prefer to somehow analyse all the posts and set the first image as the featured image. I understand Genesis using the first image as the featured image if no featured image is set - but that doesn't help for widgets like Genesis - Featured Posts etc... which have a tickbox for featured image on or off.

[Brad Dalton]

Link to your blog please.

I assume you haven't added featured images using the featured image box however you have added a image at the beginning of the editor?

---

Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[Author]

Posts