Featured Image Metabox Customization

The featured image metabox is a great feature of WordPress. It allows you to quickly choose the featured image for a post or page. But what about custom post types? Yes, you can also enable the featured image metabox for your custom post types by using the ‘supports’ parameter. Take this example below, where I am registering a Company post type:

register_post_type( 'company', 
    'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'thumbnail')
);

Notice the value ‘thumbnail’ included in the array for the supports parameter. The metabox will now show up for that post type.

‘Featured Image’ Doesn’t Make Sense

The wording ‘Featured image’ might not make sense for every post type. In our above example, I do not want to “set a featured image” for a company, but would rather “set a company logo”. So there are a couple things we need to do:

1. Change the “Featured Image” metabox title.
2. Change the links with the wording “Set featured image” and “Remove featured image”.
3. Change the “Set Featured Image” header inside the media manager modal.
4. Change the “Set featured image” button text inside the media manager modal.

Change Featured Image Metabox Title

This is not as straight forward as it may seem. You will need to hook into the add_meta_boxes action and remove the existing metabox with the name postimagediv and add it back again, but with a new title:

function company_change_featured_image_metabox_title( $post_type, $post ) {
	if ( $post_type === 'company' ) {
		//remove original featured image metabox
		remove_meta_box( 'postimagediv', 'company', 'side' );
		//add our customized metabox
		add_meta_box( 'postimagediv', __('Company Logo'), 'post_thumbnail_meta_box', 'company', 'side', 'low' );
	}
}
add_action( 'add_meta_boxes', 'company_change_featured_image_metabox_title', 10, 2 );

Notice how I target the ‘company’ post type. This is very important, so that you do not change every featured image metabox across all your post types.

Change Featured Image Links

Changing the links with the wording “Set featured image” and “Remove featured image” was probably the most difficult part. It is very easy to change if you do it across the board for all post types, but very tricky if you want to target a specific post type. The reason is the action we hook into (admin_post_thumbnail_html) gets called via ajax after you select the image, so we can’t easily see what post type we are dealing with. We need a new helper function that returns the post type from within the AJAX call:

function get_ajax_referer_post_type() {
	//extract the querystring from the referer
	$query = parse_url( wp_get_referer(), PHP_URL_QUERY );
	//extract the querystring into an array
	parse_str( $query, $query_array );
	//get the post_type querystring value
	if ( array_key_exists( 'post_type', $query_array ) ) {
		return $query_array['post_type'];
	}
	//if all else fails, we are most likely dealing with a post
	return 'post';
}

And then we need to check for an AJAX call and call this function. If we are not in an AJAX call, then simply get the post type from the current screen object:

function get_featured_image_metabox_post_type() {
	//we first need to check if this is an ajax call
	if (defined('DOING_AJAX') && DOING_AJAX) {
		return get_ajax_referer_post_type();
	}
	//get the post type in the usual way
	$screen = get_current_screen();
	return $screen->post_type;
}

And then we hook into the admin_post_thumbnail_html filter and replace some text:

function company_change_featured_image_metabox_content( $content ) {
	if (get_featured_image_metabox_post_type() === 'company' ) {
		$content = str_replace( __('Set featured image'), __('Set Company logo', 'feat-img-custom'), $content );
		$content = str_replace( __('Remove featured image'), __('Remove Company logo', 'feat-img-custom'), $content );
	}
	return $content;
}
add_filter( 'admin_post_thumbnail_html', 'company_change_featured_image_metabox_content' );

Change Text Within Media Manager

The last two changes are for two strings that are displayed within the media manager modal. This means we need to hook into the media_view_strings filter:

function company_change_featured_image_media_strings( $strings, $post ){
	if ($post->post_type === 'company') {
		$strings['setFeaturedImage'] = __('Set logo', 'feat-img-custom');
		$strings['setFeaturedImageTitle'] = __('Set Logo', 'feat-img-custom');
	}
	return $strings;
}
add_filter( 'media_view_strings', 'company_change_featured_image_media_strings', 10, 2);

A Helper Class Please

I wrapped all this functionality into a small helper class and posted it on Github. Now all you need to do is include the class and instantiate it:

require_once 'class-featured-image-metabox-cusomizer.php';
new Featured_Image_Metabox_Customizer(array(
	'post_type'     => 'company',
	'metabox_title' => __( 'Company Logo', 'my-plugin-slug' ),
	'set_text'      => __( 'Set Company logo', 'my-plugin-slug' ),
	'remove_text'   => __( 'Remove Company logo', 'my-plugin-slug' )
));

Fork, play, enjoy!