Find blog posts with missing featured images - and missing alt text - without a plugin

WordPress has the concept of "Featured Images". They are the images which show up when you share a blog post on social media or, on some themes, as the "hero" image.

How can you quickly and easily find any posts which don't have a featured image?

For this, I use WP CLI - it allows you to run complex WordPress actions and queries using the command line. After you have installed WP CLI you can get started.

Missing Images

On the command line, run:

⧉ wp eval 'foreach(get_posts(array("post_type"=>"post","post_status"=>array("publish"),"posts_per_page"=>-1,)) as $post){if(get_the_post_thumbnail($post)==""){$post_type_object=get_post_type_object($post->post_type);$link=admin_url(sprintf($post_type_object->_edit_link . "&action=edit", $post->ID));echo $post->post_date . " " . $link . " " . $post->post_title . "\n";}}'

Here's the code in a slightly more readable format:

⧉ PHPforeach ( 
   get_posts( 
       array( "post_type"      => "post", 
              "post_status"    => array("publish"), 
              "posts_per_page" => -1,
       ) 
   ) as $post) { 
      if( get_the_post_thumbnail( $post)== "" ) { 
         $post_type_object = get_post_type_object( $post->post_type ); 
         $link = admin_url( sprintf( $post_type_object->_edit_link . "&action=edit", $post->ID ) ) ;
         echo $post->post_date . " " . $link . " " . $post->post_title . "\n";
      } 
}

That will print out:

⧉ 2024-05-02 12:34:11 https://example.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=123&action=edit "A post about sausages" 
2023-09-13 20:55:52 https://example.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=456&action=edit "I like cheese"
2021-12-31 15:43:33 https://example.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=789&action=edit "Touching computers"

You can then go and edit each of those posts to add a featured image.

Missing Alt Text

Adding alt text means that people who can't see images will still be able to understand what the picture represents. Here's another one-lines to find all featured images with missing alt text:

⧉ wp eval 'foreach (get_posts(array("post_type"=>"post","post_status"=>array("publish"),"posts_per_page" => -1,)) as $post){if(simplexml_load_string(get_the_post_thumbnail($post))["alt"]==""){$post_type_object=get_post_type_object($post->post_type);$link=admin_url(sprintf($post_type_object->_edit_link . "&action=edit",$post->ID));echo $post->post_date . " " . $link . " " . $post->post_title . "\n";}}'

And, in slightly more readable form:

⧉ PHPforeach (
   get_posts( 
      array( "post_type"      => "post", 
             "post_status"    => array("publish"), 
             "posts_per_page" => -1,
           ) 
   ) as $post) { 
      if( simplexml_load_string( get_the_post_thumbnail( $post ) )["alt"] == "") { 
         $post_type_object = get_post_type_object( $post->post_type ); 
         $link = admin_url( sprintf( $post_type_object->_edit_link . "&action=edit", $post->ID ) ) ;
         echo $post->post_date . " " . $link . " " . $post->post_title . "\n"; 
      } 
}

Again, that lists the datetime of the post, its edit link, and its title.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have about 873 posts which need updating 🤯