This plugin will scan your thumbnail-less posts and look for a suitable image to use as a thumbnail.
It will look for images linked in the post content and will download and add them to the local library.
Post scanning is performed only when the_post_thumbnail or get_the_post_thumbnail are called for
that particular post.
So you designed your new thumbnail-based template, but you have tons of thumbnail-less posts and
don't want to spend too much time on scraping your old posts for a thumbnail picture. Maybe you
think you will probably forget to set a thumbnail for your new posts. Maybe both, as was my case :).
When a thumbnail for a post is queried and nothing is found this plugin will scrape the post for
an <img> tag and its href property. Once a suitabile image is found (based on the configured
settings), it will be downloaded ad set as the post thumbnail. If no suitable image is found,
a default one will be used.
This plugin is still in early development state. It just covers my needs (see the "To do" section
for more details). It has been tested only with wordpress 3.0.1, but should work also with 2.9,
since I used similar code with 2.9 (even if it was included in my template's functions.php).
The plugin is not supported. This doesn't mean that I will not look into submitted bugs. Anyway,
don't expect prompt answers, since this is done in my spare time.
- Upload
auto-thumbnail-generator to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
- Just use the default
the_post_thumbnail or get_the_post_thumbnail template tags
After installation, you can find plugin settings in the media settings page. The following settings
are available:
- Ignore previously scanned: when checked, previously scanned posts will be re-scanned on each
request if no thumbnail is linked to the post
- Uknown image: name of the image which shall be used if no thumbnail can be found for a post
(must match the media library name of an image)
- Minimum Width and Minimum Height: minium width and height for the selected thumbnails (no contraints
if set to null or 0)
- Aspect ratio: aspect ratio (width/height) for the selected thumbnails (e.g. 1.5 for 3:2 ratio,
no contraints if set to null or 0)
- Aspect ratio tolerance: tolerance to aspect ratio for selected thumbnails (percentage of aspect ratio,
e.g. 0.1 tolerance with aspect ratio set to 1.5 will select images with aspect ratio raging from
1.35 to 1.65)