We’ve been working on this one for a while. At least, we’ve long wanted to add such a feature.
For years. And years.
Why wouldn’t you? We receive questions all the time asking for the best place to find images. They’ve always been a big part of crafting more engaging blog posts—but that’s especially true now with today’s visual-centric web.
The work on this specific execution started earlier this year, and now we’re happy to share it with you. We call it Snapshots.
Snapshots is powered by an API from Unsplash, a site many are likely familiar with. It’s one of the leading providers of visuals on the web, utilized in products the likes of Facebook, Google, Square, Medium, Zoom and Mailchimp.
What’s it look like? Well, it’s pretty simple. As a feature like this should be.
If you’re on the current version of the LexBlog Platform, you’ll see it down below the post editor, though you can move it to the sidebar if you’d like. I can see it now as I type up this post.
It’s simple as it looks. Search for what you want to search for, select an image, then choose if you want it in the body of the post or as the featured image. For most folks, anyone just looking for a quick aesthetic image to go with the post, that’ll be picking ‘Use as Featured.’
And, voila, you’ll see it over in the post settings pane as your Featured Image, complete with the credit and caption.
That’s…really all there is to it. We don’t want to make this—or anything—more complex than it needs to be. If it’s easy to use, people will use it, and the results will speak for themselves.
As an aside though, I’m excited to see how this dovetails with a feature we rolled out earlier this year—in Social Cards.
These cards look their best when bloggers utilize imagery, which is now easier to do.
Instead of having the title small and mostly buried in newsfeeds, we instead have this on LinkedIn:
Or this on Facebook:
Or this on Twitter:
As we say frequently, you take care of the writing—we’ll take care of the rest. We’re just trying to tack on more and more to “the rest” to keep folks modern and help make this blogging thing a little easier.
If you have any questions or comments on the feature, let us know. We have an FAQ up in our Support Center, and you can always reach me personally at colin@lexblog.com.