Automatically setting Featured Image from an external source

[51m0n]

I use the Enterprise child them here: http://colalife.org

I store virtually all my images on Flickr (not in the WP Media Library). All posts have images within them but very few of my posts have featured images set. I now want to auto-set the featured image for all previous blog posts and for future ones too. I understand that featured images have to be stored in the Media library.

Is there a way of automatically setting (importing?) a featured image for each post from the first external image in the blog post (which will be on Flickr) WHILE KEEPING the images within the blog post external?

There are plugins that import external images into the Media Library but they also change the blog post code to point to the imported image which I do not want. If I could find a plugin that imports all external images WITHOUT changing the blog post image links, I could set the featured images by hand (which I wouldn't mind doing).

I'd be grateful for any assistance on this.

Many thanks

Simon

http://colalife.org/blog

[Ren Ventura]

I actually wrote a post that should be of some help with setting default featured images.

Set Featured Images Using URLs Instead of Media Uploads

You might also want to look at the plugin called Auto Post Thumbnail. It pulls the first image found in a post, imports it and sets it as the featured image.

http://wordpress.org/plugins/auto-post-thumbnail/

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Web & Software Developer & Blogger | RenVentura.com | Follow Me on Twitter @CLE_Ren

[DTHkelly]

Here's another free plugin to consider:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/external-featured-image/

[51m0n]

Thank you both for these suggestions. I will check the links out.

Simon

[Author]

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