Gretchen Louise

How to Create a Custom RSS Feed Summary with Featured Image in WordPress

How to Create a Custom RSS Feed Summary with Featured Image in WordPress

Gretchen Louise

In my search for the perfect solution to common RSS feed challenges, it was the beauty of Mad Mimi’s RSS emails formatted for “clean display” that finally gave me the inspiration. I’d spent hours trying to customize my MailChimp RSS campaigns to include a featured image along with the excerpt, but to no avail. (Then there is the constant frustration of extra-wide post images making the MailChimp email body drastically wider than the email header.) And even if I could get my emails to look how I wanted them to (just like Mad Mimi’s!), that still left the question of my RSS feed. That’s when I realized the solution was to start at the source and customize my WordPress RSS feed.

But customizing my WordPress RSS feed was a lot harder than it sounded. Until WordPress developer Robin Cornett took her plugin Send Images to RSS and made version 3.0 rich with all the features I’d hoped for an in RSS plugin–and more!

Here’s how to know Send Images to RSS is for you, and the details on how I set it up to create a beautiful custom RSS feed summary.

WordPress RSS Feeds: Summary vs. Full Text or Custom?

WordPress RSS Feeds: Summary vs. Full Text or Custom?

Gretchen Louise

I’ve been in a quandary about partial feeds versus full feeds ever since I knew what an RSS feed was. As a reader, I liked the ability to consume an entire post from within my feed reader or email inbox, especially when I didn’t have an internet connection at home. But as a blogger, I wanted to get readers to my site, where they could comment on posts, and of course, click on affiliate links and generate ad impressions.

But wait, what is the difference, you ask? WordPress offers two default options for displaying your RSS feed: summary or full text.

The truth is, I don’t like either option. But there’s an alternative.

My Cousin JenJen

My Cousin JenJen

Gretchen Louise

Dear JenJen, I still remember sitting there beside your mom, in a back pew of the church. She was wearing her raspberry red maternity dress with matching red heels. And there, in the middle of church, I got to feel you move when your mom put my hand on her tummy. When you were on…

Leave it to Psmith

Wodehouse & Psmith

Gretchen Louise

If you’ve never met any of P.G. Wodehouse’s characters, then let me start by introducing you to Psmith.  He used to be in fish, he conveniently borrows other people’s umbrellas, and his latest venture is pinching necklaces.  At the moment, he’s posing as a poet, even though he can’t understand a line of the poetry…

The Green Ember
Children's Books

The Green Ember

Gretchen Louise

I suppose stories about rabbits are as old as they are beloved. There is Pat the Bunny, The Velveteen Rabbit, Peter Rabbit, Peter Cottontail, Br’er Rabbit, and Uncle Wiggily to name just a few. But these classic children’s stories about rabbits have a new companion that numbers among our family’s very favorites: The Green Ember by S.D. Smith. And these rabbits have swords. Describing…

Why Read Aloud?
Reading

Why Read Aloud?

Gretchen Louise

I had always assumed that a good reader would naturally make a good writer. Not necessarily, according to Andrew Pudewa of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. Andrew Pudewa believes that the fundamental requisite for being an excellent communicator is listening to quality literature being read aloud. Why Reading Aloud Makes Good Writers What do we do when…

The End.

The End.