WP 2.9 Post Image Thumbnails
It didn’t take me long to decide to install WordPress 2.9 Beta 2 on this blog. Although we were advised not to install WordPress beta on a live site, its latest feature came just at the perfect moment: WordPress native support for setting and displaying post image thumbnails! I recently changed this blog’s theme to Thesis (which has its own method to set and display post thumbnails) but I didn’t really want to rely on a theme to do the job. If I ever move to another theme in the future, I can risk losing images on my post (or the thumbnails).
So if you are longing for a WordPress native support on post image thumbnails, you might want to try the latest beta on WordPress 2.9!
How to set a post image thumbnail in WordPress 2.9
[1] Enable the Post Image Thumbnail Support
Go to your theme’s function.php file and add:
add_theme_support (‘post-thumbnails’);
[2] Set the thumbnail of a WordPress post
When you write a post (or editing one), you’ll now see a new link at the bottom right corner of the screen:
It will actually open your Media library so you can set an image to be the thubmnail of the post. Or if you add/upload a new image in, you can also set the image as the thumbnail:
Once you click the image as the thumbnail (by clicking on the “Use as thumbnail” link), the Post Thumbnail at the bottom right of the screen should now show the selected image as the thumbnail:
[3] Display the image thumbnail
To display the thumbnail of the post, use this PHP code anywhere you want WordPress to display it:
the_post_image();
Now, the default is to print the “Thumbnail” version of the image (normally when you upload an image, WordPress automatically creates a resized thumbnail version).
Or you can also print the Medium and the Full one:
the_post_image(‘medium’);
or
the_post_image(‘full’);
To make it left-aligned or print in a specific dimension, use a more advanced code like this one:
the_post_image(array( ‘75×75′ ), array( ‘class’ => ‘alignleft’ ));
It’s a wonderful piece of feature especially to those who like the “magazine” look on their WordPress blogs. If you are using the Thesis theme, there is a single thread on the forum about this too.
Other WordPress 2.9 Features
Trash
Instead of deleting stuffs permanently, WordPress now stores them in its “Recycle Bin”. This includes posts, images, and comments. No more “Uh oh!” coming out from your mouth once you pressed that “Delete” button 
So you’ll now see those “Move to Trash” button instead of a “Delete”.
Image Editing
WordPress now comes with a standard image editing such as crop, rotate, flip, and resize too:
oEmbed Support for easier media embedding
Easily embed YouTube, Flickr, PollDaddy, and others to your posts now. I haven’t actually tested this yet but it sounds like a really interesting thing to have, especially if you are not familiar with embedding HTML codes.
Other WordPress 2.9 features and fixes in the WordPress Codex.
Have you used WordPress 2.9 Beta on your blog yet? Or you are waiting for the final one to be released?
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I haven’t upgraded all of my blogs yet.
Best way is to wait for it to go final and use the WordPress automatic upgrade then
Hey, and I was just thinking of why Wordpress.com had a Trash bin and the self-hosted version didn’t. How long is it in beta? Is it because it still has some bugs or what?
About the thumbnails… yes, it’s very nice to have native support for thumbnails instead of Values that might not work on other themes, but after so much customizing of my theme to make it (nearly) perfect and the way I want it, I’ll be more than hesitant to try out a new theme.
Even you were hesitant to go with Thesis right away, correct? And in the end, you just took the the thumbnail feature that Arthemia had.
In addition, the theme I am currently tweaking has (and I have no idea how they did this
) some amazing capability. The theme requires a 280 x 130 picture for the rectangular thumbnail (for the homepage), and for the smaller square thumbnails (for archives and categories), they don’t just resize your rectangular picture and squish in the whole image, they somehow crop it and take a part of the image, so that it still has the same width and height ratio. Of course, most magazine templates use square thumbnails everywhere on their blog and just resize them, but I thought this was quite the cool feature. 
So *are* you using the native thumbnail feature now?
P.S. Image editing is also nice, but really? I take care to choose just the right type of image and it goes through a lot of Photoshop or Paint. NET editing, so that I’m not dependent on rotating or resizing it using Wordpress tools. Useful, but only for the rushing blogger.
I haven’t read through the whole Codex yet but kudos on the “Display better information about broken themes when there is no stylesheet”. More than a few problems with that when I was trying out different themes!
Yes I am using the feature now on my front page. Although I love the old Arthemia thumbnail style (it automatically use the first image and cut them in the same dimension size all the time). With WordPress 2.9 (and Thesis), you need to do it manually or they’ll use the resized version which has an uneven dimension
I’m also using WinSnap to take care of my image resizing and editing so I don’t use this feature at all
I just realized though – to make the “official” thumbnail appear, you still have to add the line of code “the_post_image();”, and (especially since this is in beta) lots of template won’t be using this but will use their own method. So really, besides having an Upload button for it, there’s really no difference between this method and the methods that magazine templates use now… is there anything I’m missing? For people creating their own templates or tweaking things on a template that doesn’t have any thumbnails to begin with this can be useful, but other than that…
Well most magazine templates already have this feature, although they do it differently.
My Arthemia uses the timthumb PHP script to automatically generates the thumbnail and then displays it.
With Thesis , you have to manually set the image every post on a special field. This means that if I ever change to a different theme, this customization is lost. That’s why I choose the native support more than a theme’s special feature.
If you already your own magazine theme that automatically generates and displays the thumbnails, then this feature is no use for you
I am actually waiting for the final version and after reading your review I just can’t wait for it.
If you are not in a hurry to use the feature, waiting for a more stable version is always the better choice. Although I haven’t encountered any bugs or problems with the Beta 2 yet *phew*
Thanks for the heads up.
Will check these features out.
Can’t wait till it’s available for us, upgrading gives me pleasure always, thanks for this great post!
Yeah, it’s the thrill of waiting what’s next on WordPress new version
That’s why I love WordPress – they constantly hear us and improve it
I bet the fact that thesis is so popular and has this feature effected the decision to incorporate it into WP.
I’m not 100% sure but I’d say it definitely has! Or maybe the WP team sees the popularity of magazine themes
Yes, WP is great blogging platform, as a newbie on WP World I really enjoy WP so much. WP made my blogging easier and give my blog more power.
Yeah, WordPress rocks. I’m always excited to see what the next version will provide
Exciting!