Comments on: Using TimThumb, WPMU & catch_that_image

By: cokke'

cokke' — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:21:24 +0000

thanks for the useful article… i try to do it and it solve my problem when i try to use ephoto from elegant theme on my WPMU….

regards…

- Cokke’ -

By: FriendlyDesign

FriendlyDesign — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:52:33 +0000

eDDi, that’s a neat little trick, good work! We’ll update our original post in due course.

By: eDDi Hughes

eDDi Hughes — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:09:10 +0000

Wait! I miss read it! So I tested it out by replacing the no thumbnail line:

$first_img = “/images/default.jpg”;

With the lines below. Now, if we add another if statement, if attachment > 0 then boom! What do you think of that?! :D

—————————

$attachments = get_children(array(’post_parent’ => get_the_ID(), ‘post_type’ => ‘attachment’, ‘post_mime_type’ => ‘image’, ‘orderby’ => ‘menu_order’));

if ( ! is_array($attachments) ) continue;
$count = count($attachments);
$first_attachment = array_shift($attachments);

//We’re on WPMU
$theImageSrc = wp_get_attachment_url($first_attachment->ID);
$imageParts = explode(’/files/’, $theImageSrc);

if (isset($imageParts[1]))
{
$first_img = ‘/blogs.dir/’ . $blog_id . ‘/files/’ . $imageParts[1];
}

—————————

By: eDDi Hughes

eDDi Hughes — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:32:54 +0000

I had an idea to call out the first image, so I tested it replacing the default.gif part with:

———————————

$attachments = get_children(array(’post_parent’ => get_the_ID(), ‘post_type’ => ‘attachment’, ‘post_mime_type’ => ‘image’, ‘orderby’ => ‘menu_order’));

if ( ! is_array($attachments) ) continue;
$count = count($attachments);
$first_attachment = array_shift($attachments);

echo wp_get_attachment_url($first_attachment->ID);

———————————

How would we write it so that wp_get_attachment_url($first_attachment->ID); returns the $first_img = ‘/blogs.dir/’ . $blog_id . ‘/files/’ . $imageParts[1]; properly???

By: FriendlyDesign

FriendlyDesign — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:01:37 +0000

Hi Eddi, glad this worked for you. You’re right about this being potentially cumbersome if you start getting into scores or hundreds of blogs. However, TimThumb does actually cache the images (hence the folder) so this will save some server resources. We have it running on a setup which has about 120 blogs and generates about 10,000 unique visitors on a daily basis and (albeit with a fairly poky server) never had a hiccup. Let us know how you get on! Now, about that beer…. :)

By: eDDi Hughes

eDDi Hughes — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:18:58 +0000

Sir,

I feel that I owe you a pint of the best beer in your region. This worked flawless with one draw back, the files timthumb.php was generating weren’t being written to the cache directory.

I chmod the directory to 777 and it worked. The downside: with WPMU this could be cumbersome if you have multiple themes / users…

Any suggestions?

By: Chad Hill

Chad Hill — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:53:31 +0000

Thanks…you saved my life

By: FriendlyDesign

FriendlyDesign — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:52:00 +0000

Our pleasure! Thanks for the comments and good luck over the weekend. Give us a shout if you need a helping hand.

By: James

James — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:47:11 +0000

Brilliant explanation. Thanks for taking the time to go step by step. I’m gonna take a crack at implementing this over the weekend.
Thanks again!
-james

By: mbcx9rvt

mbcx9rvt — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:49:55 +0000

Hi James, don’t worry about being new to this – this sort of stuff isn’t as trivial as it first seems. You need to add that larger chunk of code into your functions.php file. You need to make sure you _replace_ the existing catch_that_image function with that. Then, in your theme files – so on index.php, home.php, single.php or wherever you want to have control over the size of the image, then you put the first line of code that we posted. Hopefully that makes sense. If not, send us an e-mail and we’ll walk you through it.