Here’s a WordPress plugin that will allow you to focus on writing that and make your site look better at the same time.

Auto Featured Image from Title does what it’s called. It automatically creates an image from the post title and sets it as the featured image.

If you run a blog, it’s because you have a message you want to share. You’re passionate about spreading that message. So you labor over articles about that thing which you love, carefully crafting each word together, because the message you want to share is important. And then, after all the labor of love that you’ve put into your blog post, you realize that you’re not done yet.

You need a featured image.

So you begin the dreaded search online for an image that will represent your message well, because you know that having a unique image attached to each and every blog post will help with things like SEO, social sharing, and simply the attractiveness of the blog post. You begin with free stock photography sites, but often find them to have a low selection of mostly low quality photographs.

You move to paid stock photography sites, but find that the best photos often come with a high price tag. And no matter what image you end up selecting, you feel like you’ve compromised, and it took to long to find, and you wish there was a way you could just snap your fingers and have WordPress do all the work for you.

That’s what Auto Featured Image from Title does. Except for the finger snapping part. That’s optional. For example, for the article you’re currently reading, the plugin would generate a featured image that could look something like this:

Here’s another example of what’s possible with this plugin, for a blog post titled, “The Beauty of the Earth”.

How does it work?

Write a post, click Publish, and the plugin will create an image to go with it. It’s that easy. Well, kind of.

You’ll want to customize the output of the image via the plugin’s settings first, so that the images will match the look and feel of your site. You have many options to customize them. You’ll want to adjust the width and height, of course, and probably the fonts, colours, and background image.

You can choose what the plugin will write to the featured image (the post title, excerpt, a custom field, or some other options). There are many other options to set, and it can take a bit of tweaking to get the featured images to look just the way you want them to. But once you set them up the first time, everything just works.

You can upload your own fonts and images to be used for the background. You can use the same background image every time, or you can upload a few images that compliment your site well, and tell the plugin to select a random one each time.

If you already have a bunch of posts that don’t have featured images, you can also run the bulk featured image generator to automatically create images for every post that doesn’t have one yet. Quite handy!

Download Add-Ons for More Customization

Along with the base plugin, there are currently two add-on plugins available as well. These allow for even more customization. The SEO Add-On allows you to customize the filename, alt text, caption, and image description, which might be used depending on how your theme uses this data.

The More Text Add-On allows you to add up to 2 more layers of text to your featured image. These are independent layers of text, much like layers in Photoshop, which you can customize with their own fonts, colors, and placement. Here’s an example of what’s possible using the More Text Add-On.

What’s it cost?

There’s a free version hosted at WordPress.org, but the PRO version has several benefits over the free version:

• bulk generate featured images for all previous pages and posts
• adjust quality of generated images
• upload your own fonts
• upload your own background images
• use a random background image
• turn writing text to images off
• use a random Flickr photo for the background image (currently experimental)
• position the text on the image in various ways (top, bottom, center, etc)

The PRO version is $29. There’s also a PREMIUM package for $49, which includes a multi-site license, and also all of the add-ons (including future ones) for free (otherwise, add-ons are $9 each).

TIP: Install the free version first to make sure it works on your server or host, and also to find a promo code to get 30% off!