Sam wanted to identify which pages on aguiarinjurylawyers.com were missing a featured image, fix them by assigning working featured images, and then get a full audit of every page's hero image (the large background image at the top of each page). The session covered three main phases: (1) auditing and deploying featured images for 155 pages/posts that had none, (2) re-deploying those images using Sam's curated image library, and (3) attempting a hero image audit that ultimately needed a different approach.
Used the WP REST API to audit all 425 published items (225 pages + 200 posts). Found 155 without a featured image and 270 that already had one. Categorized the 155 into 23 topic categories (truck, car-accident, motorcycle, insurance, pedestrian, delivery, dog, wrongful-death, uber, rideshare, construction, bicycle, brain, spine, whiplash, nursing, atv, location, landing, office, default, etc.) and assigned images from the existing media library by category.
Created a "Computer API" application password in wp-admin for REST API access. Deployed all 155 featured images via a background bash script running 5 concurrent curl commands. Verified 154/155 succeeded on first pass, retried the 1 failure, confirmed all 155.
Sam provided a curated image document (Site-Image-options.md) with organized categories: Logos, Trust badges, Sam Aguiar photos, Car Accident Scenes (17 images), Hero Backgrounds (office, trucking, truck accidents, Louisville skyline), Amazon content (10 images), Community events (10 images), Motorcycle (7 images), Practice Areas (bicycle, uber, wrongful death, dog bite, construction), Insurance boardroom, Attorney headshots (11 attorneys with URLs), Bokeh backgrounds.
Refreshed the media library cache (1,484 items across 15 pages), mapped all 148 unique curated image URLs to their WordPress media IDs, then built an updated deployment plan that re-mapped all 155 pages to use the curated images. Applied special overrides for attorney-specific pages (matching headshots to the right attorney), community/Sam Cares pages, Amazon delivery pages, slip-and-fall pages, and Forbes/awards pages.
Deployed 151 updated images (4 already had the correct image from the first pass). All 151 returned HTTP 200. Spot-checked 20 random pages via API, all confirmed.
Sam asked for a list of all pages with the hero image being used on each. First attempt parsed hero images from the WP REST API content.rendered field. This was wrong for many pages because:
Second attempt fetched live HTML of all 425 pages via parallel curl. 258 loaded, but 167 were blocked by Cloudflare ("Just a moment" challenge pages). Sam declined wide_browse and asked for a handoff document instead.
Sam reported /practice-areas/louisville-personal-injury-attorneys/ was redirecting to the homepage. Found page ID 43550 had a redirect block at the top of its content: meta http-equiv="refresh" and window.location.replace(), followed by the actual page content. Removed the redirect block via REST API, preserving the real content. Verified the page renders correctly.