Custom field option ?

Hi!

Nelio already uses a custom field for storing the URL of the external featured image. It’s called _nelioefi_url. As you can see, the custom field is private (it starts with an underscore _). If you want to define featured images without accessing the WordPress Dashboard, you simply need to populate that field.

If you can’t set the value of a private custom field, note you can change its name to whatever you want. For instance:

add_filter( 'nelioefi_post_meta_key', 'nelioefi_change_field_name' );
function nelioefi_change_field_name( $name ) {
  return 'nelio_external_url';
}//end nelioefi_change_field_name()

This, however, will only work from the moment you apply the function on. Any previous featured images will use the old custom field name, which means you’ll have to update your database with a SQL query such as:

UPDATE wp_postmeta
SET meta_key = 'nelio_external_url'
WHERE meta_key = '_nelioefi_url';

Warning: Before modifying your database, make sure you have a backup. Otherwise, you might corrupt it and “lose” your data.