Solving Featured Image Display Bugs in Custom WordPress Themes

After migrating to a new environment, a WordPress site using a custom theme started showing unexpected behavior — from PHP warnings to broken “Hide Featured Image” toggles. The root cause? A mix of missing plugin checks, faulty shortcode logic, and improperly applied conditional rules. With careful debugging, Freshy was able to restore expected functionality across posts and improve how meta fields were handled.

Plugin Dependency Check

The theme assumed WooCommerce and other plugins were active, causing PHP warnings when they weren’t. Logic was updated to safely verify plugin presence before executing related code.

Shortcode Issue Resolved

A broken rendering pipeline prevented shortcodes like [member_logged_in_title] from appearing. Fixing upstream errors restored their functionality across templates.

Fixing the Meta Logic

The “Hide Featured Image” toggle wasn’t working as intended due to incorrect handling of serialized custom fields. The logic was updated to properly read and apply the toggle across all posts.

Removed Hardcoded Limits

The visibility rule was oddly restricted to post IDs over 29997. We eliminated this condition so the toggle now works for all posts, regardless of publish date or user status.

Final Outcome

✅ PHP warnings eliminated
✅ Featured image toggle now works everywhere
✅ Shortcodes and embeds function normally
✅ Page editor UX simplified by aligning toggle behavior

If your theme’s logic is holding back your WordPress site, we’re here to help.

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