How to Auto Insert Thumbnails Into WordPress
Native thumbnail support became available with version 3.0 of WordPress. This means developers no longer rely on third-party scripts or plugins to add automatically resized thumbnails to WordPress blogs. Users still need to add a "featured image" to get thumbnails on posts, though. To get around this requirement and make thumbnails fully automatic, you can use a plugin with your 3.0-compatible WordPress theme.
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Instructions
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Auto Post Thumbnail
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Log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to "Plugins." Click "add new" and type "Auto Post Thumbnail" into the search box. Under the title "Auto Post Thumbnail," click the "Install Now" link and click "Okay." Click the activation link after the plugin installs itself.
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Navigate to your posts and check that each post contains at least one image. The "Auto Post Thumbnail" plugin will generate a thumbnail for the first image attached to every post, except for when a "featured image" is already set. Posts with a "featured image" are left alone by the plugin.
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Click on "Settings" in the left-hand menu and then click the link for "Auto Post Thumbnail." Click the "generate thumbnails" button to generate thumbnails for each post. Note that when you create new posts, you can either set a "featured image" or use this button to generate thumbnails for any new posts that do not yet have one.
DP Thumbnail
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Log into the WordPress dashboard and navigate to "Plugins." Click the "add new" link and type "DP Thumbnail" into the search box. Click the "Install Now" link under the title "DP Thumbnail" and click "Okay." Activate the plugin when it finishes installing.
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Click the "Settings" link in the left-hand menu and then click on "DP Thumbnail." Configure the plugin using this settings screen. Select how the plugin should find images for thumbnails, image size and alignment. You can have the plugin grab images from custom fields, attachments or the first image in the post, or the plugin can take advantage of "featured images."
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Create a default image and then upload it for this plugin to use by clicking the "Upload Image" button on the "DP Thumbnail" settings page. A grey box, your site logo or a generic photo are all good choices. Save changes to use this default as a fall-back for when you publish posts with no images.
WP-Thumbie
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Log into the dashboard and click "Plugins" in the left-hand menu. Click "add new" and type "WP-Thumbie" into the search bar. Click the installation link under the name of the plugin to install, and then activate when it finishes downloading. The WP-Thumbie plugin will add automatic thumbnails of related posts to each post in your WordPress blog.
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Navigate to "Settings" and click on "WP-Thumbie" to get to the settings page. Set how many thumbnails to display on each post. Set the width and height of the thumbnails using pixel values. You can also tell the plugin to exclude certain categories by listing them in the appropriate box. Click the "save" button to save settings.
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Uncheck the box next to "Add related posts to the post content on single posts" if you want to add the contents of this plugin to your theme manually. Open the file of the template you wish to edit, such as "single.php" for the single post template, and add the following code somewhere in the loop:
<?php if(function_exists('wp_thumbie')) wp_thumbie(); ?>
Save the theme file and reupload it if necessary. This last step is not suggested for use by non-programmers or anyone unfamiliar with editing WordPress template files.
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References
- Photo Credit Goodshoot/Goodshoot/Getty Images
