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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.

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 Beauty of Grace

The Beauty of Grace

Gretchen Louise

The blogosphere is full of words these days. Our friends are always sharing the latest, greatest, must-read post. And sometimes, the noise is overwhelming. We stop looking for new blogs to read because there are just too many to choose from. We turn off the web browser with the flashing ads and turn to the peaceful pages of a…

#ReformingSocialMedia: a review of the book by Mandy J. Hoffman

#ReformingSocialMedia: a review of the book by Mandy J. Hoffman

Gretchen Louise

When my oldest daughter lost her two front teeth, I immediately snapped pictures. And my first instinct was to post them to Facebook and email them to the great grandparents. But then I remembered a story Mandy J. Hoffman told in her book #ReformingSocialMedia. When her daughter got her ears pierced, Mandy refrained from immediately posting the…

The End.

The End.