Thumbnails in WP 2.9

I just updated to 2.9 and knowing what was ahead, I upgraded my blog theme to use the 2.9 built in thumbnail system to implement thumbnails for my posts. I have one word to describe the process, “tedious”. I found some great information on this site: http://wpengineer.com/the-ultimative-guide-for-the_post_thumbnail-in-wordpress-2-9/

I was excited that WordPress had decided to add this to the core, but I’m seeing one thing missing and that is the ability to get_the_post_thumbnail, and just return the URL of the chosen thumbnail’s original image. This would be mighty helpful for designers who want to control the use of images in the theme and do their own resizing using timthumb. I’ll have to dig through the code for 2.9 over Christmas and see if it’s a function that just isn’t documented yet, which is usually the case.

For now, it looks like converting to the new WP thumbnail system means that you don’t nessesarily control the image size and cropping when you pull images in as thumbnails. Not the worst of things for designers to sacrifice, but could add a pain of documentaiton explaining to users how to set their media settings in WP to match the sizes they have previously been using automatically. Overall though, the 2.9 thumbnail functionality is a hit, although I don’t look forward to converting all my themes over to the new system, but I do look forward to using it.