Post-Thumb's FAQ This guide is: 1/ A work in progress 2/ Supposed to give you some answers, or at least hints on "How to" Troubleshooting Q - I've installed Post-Thumb, but nothing happens. A - gd2 needs to be activated in your PHP. A - Check your "Base path" and "Full domain name" in options screen. An error message should appear if paths are incorrect. A - Thumbnail path must be chmoded at 777. A - If you're using relative path, you may need to check they fit Pos-Thumb standards: http://www.alakhnor.com/post-thumb/?p=117. A - Be sure that if you copied from an example, quotes are properly copied: parameters must be surrounded by single standard quotes or double quotes. A - the_thumb, the_recent_thumbs and the_random_thumb are self echoed functions. Functions starting with "get" must be echoed. Q - I've put the_thumb in the loop and another function in the sidebar, but though I specified different sizes, it doesn't seem to take them into account. A - By default, thumbnails are saved in one unique folder and named after option settings. If there is more than one display using them, they need to be differentiate. There is two ways to do it: using ALTAPPEND or SUBFOLDER. ALTAPPEND will change the save name. SUBFOLDER will specify a different folder to save thumbnails. Usage Q - How can I display the most recent posts in the sidebar? A - If your theme is widget ready, you can use the pt-recent widget. If not, just insert: were you want it to appear. Q - I've added in my sidebar, but it's far from what I expected. 9 A - Okay, you've done the most difficult, don't give up now! Now go to your option screen and read carefully each option in order to adjust the display to whatever you want. Q - I've changed the option on the option screen, but nothing has changed. A - Well, each time you refresh a page, Post-Thumb automatically calculates the thumbnail and check if it exists. If it does, it doesn't create it but retrieves it from the server. This is to save resources. So, if you change a display option, you need to delete the existing thumbnails (and then, very often, your browser cache) to see the changes. Q - I've deleted the old thumbnails, but they still appear! A - Have you cleared your browser cache? Q - So you say I need to delete the thumbnails. Isn't that risky? A - Not at all. They were created by Post-Thumb. And what it has created once, it can create it again and again. It will just slow down your page first time it's refreshed, but no other consequences. Q - I've set-up everything. It works fine except that it's a real mess! A - Well, we have CSS issue there. It's not really possible to have a unique code to insert in any blog because there are so many different themes and different CSS. Formatting has several ways to go. The function call can use some parameters like this: Tag1 will be inserted before each thumb, tag2 after each thumb, tag3 before the whole display, tag4 after the whole display. Example: ', '', ''); ?> In addition to this, you can use MYCLASSHREF and MYCLASSIMG parameters which add a class to resp. the href link and the img src. Q - How not to use highslide effects? A - Uncheck "Use highslide" in "Highslide settings" on Options screen. Q - How to have square thumbnail? A - Uncheck "keep ratio" in "Image settings" on Options screen. Use same width and height in "Resize width x height" option. Q - How to display a list of thumbnails in the sidebar? A - insert this code: Q - How to display a thumbnail plus an excerpt in the Loop? A - insert this code: in place of line. Advanced users Q - I'm using the recent widget (or get_recent_thumb) in my sidebar, but I get a vertical list of thumbnails A - You need to add some CSS in your theme's style.css file like .wid_recent li { float: left; } or else. Q - How can I change frame aspect? A - In option, you can control frame aspect with frame border style, size and inside margin. For more formatting option (like backgrounds), use js/style_hs.css.