So how is it done?

First the feature needs to be turned on by including this line in your theme’s function.php:

add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

Once that is added you can use the_post_thumbnail function in your theme. To accomplish what we’re going after we set up a new query to show the top five posts ordered by comment:

<?php $popular = new WP_Query('orderedby=comment_count&posts_per_page=5'); ?>
	<?php while ($popular->have_posts()) : $popular->the_post(); ?>

Next we check to see if there is a thumbnail image and if there isn’t we display an alternate image instead:

<?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() )
		the_post_thumbnail(array(60,60));
	else echo '<img src="default.png" alt="Default Image" title="Default" />';
	?>

And finally we add the permalink for the post and close out the query:

<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="Bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>

You can also adapt this so it outputs an unordered list. Note: This is only going to work in versions 2.9 and up in WordPress. You can add backwards compatibility for the_post_thumbnail function but orderedby=comment_count only works in 2.9.

Here’s the entire query:

<?php $popular = new WP_Query('orderedby=comment_count&posts_per_page=5'); ?>
	<?php while ($popular->have_posts()) : $popular->the_post(); ?>
	<?php if ( has_post_thumbnail() )
		the_post_thumbnail(array(60,60));
	else echo '<img src="default.png" alt="Default Image" title="Default" />';
	?>
	<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="Bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
<?php endwhile; ?>

Check out the posts over at Kremalicious and WPEngineer for a lot more information on the_post_thumbnail function. And thanks to Alex Denning at WPSHOUT for the idea.

Code + WordPress + Helping Others = CodeNextDoor

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What can you expect?

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