How to Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress (Simple & Easy)

Even though it may seem like a small thing, one of the things we sometimes add to our WordPress sites is a simple fade-in or fade-out animation when a user moves their mouse over an image. It’s a subtle yet effective way to make our sites more engaging and interactive.

We’ve found that these small visual cues can make a big difference in how visitors interact with our content. It’s not just about making the site look prettier – these animations can actually encourage visitors to explore more of our content.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add this fade image effect on mouseover in WordPress. 

Why Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress?

Animations are an easy way to make your website more interesting and can even draw the visitor’s attention toward your page’s most important content, such as your website logo or a call to action.

There are lots of different ways to use CSS animations in WordPress, but adding a hover effect to images is particularly effective. The fade animation means your images will slowly appear or disappear when visitors hover over them.

This encourages people to interact with your images and can even add a storytelling element to the page. For example, different images might fade in and out as the visitor moves around the page.

Unlike some other animations, the fade image on the mouseover effect is subtle, so it won’t negatively impact the visitor’s reading experience or any image optimization you’ve done.

With that said, let’s show you how to add a fade to your images on mouseover in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use:

Method 1: Adding Image Fade on Mouseover to all WordPress Images

The easiest way to add a fade effect to all your images is by using WPCode. This free plugin allows you to easily add custom code in WordPress without having to edit your theme files.

With WPCode, even beginners can edit their website’s code without risking mistakes and typos that can cause many common WordPress errors.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

Here, you will see all the ready-made WPCode snippets you can add to your site. These include a snippet that allows you to completely disable comments, upload file types that WordPress doesn’t usually support, disable attachment pages, and much more.

Simply hover your mouse over ‘Add Your Custom Code’ and then click on ‘+ Add Custom Snippet’ when it appears.

To start, type in a title for the custom code snippet. This can be anything that helps you identify the snippet in the WordPress dashboard.

To add custom CSS to WordPress, open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and select ‘CSS Snippet.’

In the code editor, add the following code snippet:

img:hover {
opacity:0.6;
filter:alpha(opacity=60); /* For IE8 and earlier */
-webkit-transition: all 2s ease;
-moz-transition: all 2s ease;
-ms-transition: all 2s ease;
-o-transition: all 2s ease;
transition: all 2s ease;
}

This code snippet will fade each image for 2 seconds when the user hovers their mouse over it. To make the image fade slower, simply replace ‘2s ease’ with a higher number. If you want to make the picture fade faster, then use ‘1s ease’ or smaller.

You can also make the ‘opacity’ higher or lower by changing the opacity:0.6 line.

If you change any of these numbers, then make sure you change them across all the properties (webkit, moz, ms, and o) so the fade effect looks the same on every browser.

When you are happy with the snippet, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ section. WPCode can add your code to different locations, such as after every post, frontend only, or admin only.

To add a fade effect to all your images, click on ‘Auto Insert’ if it isn’t already selected. Then, open the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose ‘Site Wide Header.’

After that, you are ready to scroll to the top of the screen and click on the ‘Inactive’ toggle so it changes to ‘Active.’

Finally, click on ‘Save Snippet’ to make the CSS snippet live.

Now, if you hover the mouse over any image on your WordPress website, you’ll see the fade effect in action.

Method 2: Adding Image Fade Animations to Individual Pages

Using a fade effect for every single image can become distracting, especially if you have a photo gallery on your website, a stock photo store, or any other site that has lots of images.

With that in mind, you may want to use fade effects on a specific page or post only.

The good news is that WPCode allows you to create custom shortcodes. You can place this shortcode on any page, and WordPress will show fade effects on that page only.

To do this, simply create a custom code snippet and add the fade animation code following the same process described above. Then, click on the ‘Save snippet’ button.

After that, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ section, but this time select ‘Shortcode.’

This creates a shortcode that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area.

After that, go ahead and make the snippet live following the same process described above.

You can now go to any page, post, or widget-ready area and create a new ‘Shortcode’ block. Then, simply paste the WPCode shortcode into that block.

For more information on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

With that done, either click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make the shortcode live. You can then visit that page, page, or widget-ready area to see the fade-on mouseover effect.

Method 3: Adding Image Fade Animations to Featured Images

Another option is to add fade animations to your featured images or post thumbnails. These are the post’s primary images.

By fading featured images on mouseover, you can make your site more eye-catching and engaging without animating every single image across your WordPress blog or website.

To add a fade animation to your post thumbnails, simply create a new custom code snippet following the same process described above.

However, this time, add the following code to the editor:

img.wp-post-image:hover {
opacity:0.6;
filter:alpha(opacity=60); /* For IE8 and earlier */
-webkit-transition: all 2s ease;
-moz-transition: all 2s ease;
-ms-transition: all 2s ease;
-o-transition: all 2s ease;
transition: all 2s ease;
}

After that, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ box and select ‘Auto Insert.’

Then, open the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose ‘Site Wide Header.’

After that, you can go ahead and make the code snippet live using the same process described above.

Now, you can hover the mouse over any featured image to see the fade animation in action.

If you want to add even more image mouseover effects, then see our guide on how to add image hover effects in WordPress.

Bonus Effects to Add to Your WordPress Images

Fade effects are a fun way to make images more interesting, but there are lots more ways to use animations in WordPress. For example, you might use flipbox animations to reveal text when a visitor hovers over an image or zoom effects so users can explore a picture in more detail.

Here are other interesting effects you can add to your images:

• How to Add Instagram-like Photo Filters in WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Show Before and After Photo in WordPress (with Slide Effect)
• How to Add No Right Click on WordPress Images
• How to Create Interactive Images in WordPress
• How to Easily Add Interactive 360 Degree Images in WordPress

We hope this article helped you learn how to fade images on mouseover in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to organize WordPress files in media library folders and our expert picks of the best featured image plugins and tools for WordPress.

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