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 (https://wp-cli.org/) - it allows you to run complex WordPress actions and queries using the command line. After you have installed WP CLI (https://wp-cli.org/#installing) you can get started.

Missing Images (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/find-blog-posts-with-missing-featured-images-and-missing-alt-text-without-a-plugin/#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:

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”; } }

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 (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/find-blog-posts-with-missing-featured-images-and-missing-alt-text-without-a-plugin/#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:

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”; } }

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

No, if you’ll excuse me, I have about 873 posts which need updating 🤯