Tutorial

Disable Lazy Loading Images Using the_post_thumbnail() in WordPress

The introduction of lazy-loading of images as of WordPress 5.5 improves site performance by delaying them until the user scrolls into view making our pages feel faster by only loading images as we need to see them.

The Problem

However, I needed a way to disable lazy loading for specific features like this image carousel where the last few slides would not load as they rotated into view. 🙁

Image not loading on reveal in a carousel — A blank space where an image should appear. Lazy Loading somehow prevented the image from displaying on first pass while using Foundation 6’s Orbit Carousel.

The Solution

Disable lazy loading of the carousel images using this template part.

the_post_thumbnail( 'carousel', [ 'class' => 'orbit-image' , 'loading' => false ] );

The code above is inspired by modifying the attr argument using an array.

Adding ‘loading’ => false to the array disables the feature for this homepage image carousel.

The *Orbit* carousel now loads all images at page load.

Before and After

loading=”lazy” appears within the image HTML tag.

loading=”lazy” no longer displays with the image.

code sample using WP_query

Disabling lazy loading for a specific use of the_post_thumbnail() allows us to benefit from the feature everywhere else. 😀

If post hasn’t been modified recently in WordPress

Today an issue came up where a reader of one of a site I manage was referring to content that was out of date. Normally that’s not a problem but in this case it is a timely pandemic documentation page where the content is very likely to be out of date within a couple months if its not routinely updated.

To solve this challenge I decided to write a small function that will check the last modified date of a post and place an alert below the title and above the content. That notice would read…

This page has not been updated in 60 days. The information below may be outdated.

Which is a casual way of alerting the reader that if this information is timely perhaps check elsewhere on the site for a newer post. Likewise, if that person is looking for an older post they can safely disregard the notice. posting a discrete notice can come in handy depending on the context that brought a reader to the post.

Functions.php

<?php
// If post is older than 60 days return true
function jd_is_old_post($days = 60 ) {
	$days = (int) $days;
	$offset = $days*60*60*24;
	if ( get_post_modified_time() < date('U') - $offset )
		return true;
	
	return false;
}
?>

Place within the WordPress Loop

<?php
// If post is older than 60 days display this notice
if ( jd_is_old_post() ) {
	echo '<div class="old-post-notice">';
        echo '<p><strong>This page has not been updated in 60 days. The information below may be outdated.</p></strong>';
    echo '</div>';
} 
?>

View Snippet on Bitbucket

Attachment Image Snippet

This snippet for wp_get_attachment_image_src frequently appears in my theme development to select an image by its unique ID in the WordPress media library.

Handy for instances where logos, banners, or any other image frequently recurs on a website and you’d rather store that image in the media library where it can be replaced or modified dynamically.

// replace 7 with unique ID number of image
$image_attributes = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $attachment_id = 7, 'full' );

// retrieves alternative text from image information 
$alt = get_post_meta( $attachment_id , '_wp_attachment_image_alt', true );

if ( $image_attributes ) {
	echo '<img src="'. $image_attributes[0] .'" width="' . $image_attributes[1] . '" height="' . $image_attributes[2] . '" alt="' . $alt . '" />';
}

How it works

Set the unique id number in the snippet
Displays the image and relevant attributes

This code is based on the official Code References at WordPress.org for wp_get_attachment_image_src() and as get_post_meta().