I was looking for ways to optimize my website . . . to make it quicker and easier for me to maintain and update, while being fun to browse for my visitors. The problem with the old gallery and random photos at the top of each page, was that I had to make the thumbnails and update the page and database for both (I was using the this randomizer plugin for Wordpress), each time I added a photo. It was good because I’d crop, scale down, and sharpen each image to look its best, but the extra work was too much. I found the Post Thumb plugin is the perfect solution. I installed it, set it to make 100×70 thumbnails, and then added this code to my blog header:
<?php the_random_thumb(”link=p&limit=5&category=8″); >
That makes it show five random photos from the category for my photos, linking to the page for each instead of the file. The great thing here is that the thumbnail folder and accompanying MySQL table is updated automatically, so photos are added to the pool as soon as I publish them. A random photos section is …
