Many magazine style themes use thumbnail images beside the excerpt throughout the theme.  Up until now many themes have used a Custom Field to make this association.   The Get the Image plugin has been one solution that continues to work seamlessly with the new features of WordPress 2.9.   This post assumes that you theme designer has already ensured that thumbnails are working in your theme.   If you are looking to figure out how to figure that out check out Everything you need to know about WordPress 2.9’s post image feature).  This post is a quick look at how to add associate a thumbnail image with your post.

How to associate a thumbnail image with your post or page:

1. To use this feature, you must be within the post or page editing screen in your WordPress admin. Scroll down to the very bottom of the right hand column and you’ll see a new  box labeled “Post thumbnail” (or “Page thumbnail” for pages). If you click “Set thumbnail,” you can use the media uploader to load a new image or select an image from your media library and set it as the thumbnail.
2. Browse to upload the image or look in your media library for an image you have already uploaded.  Instead of clicking insert into post click use as thumbnail. 

The image will now appear in the Post Thumnail box in the right hand column.

Now wasn’t that easy? What do you think about this addition to WordPress 2.9?

Related posts:

1. WP-admin Lesson 2: Writing Your first Post
2. Commenting – Why and How to Comment on a blog post
3. Uploading and Editing Images in WP 2.9 Lesson
4. WP-admin an Introduction
5. WP-admin Lesson 3: Pages