When we wrote our shoes, sex and chocolate piece about the launch party for Daisy Green Magazine, we had little idea that it would get to 10,000 pageviews so quickly.  As well as getting great stories to the readers, it has also proved a real coup for the advertisers who were lucky enough to snap up flat rate introductory offers.

Some other Daisy Green statistics that we are really proud of:

• the magazine should top 1,000 unique readers by the end of today
• the website is already on page 1 of a Google search for “ethical fashion magazine”
• readers stay on the site a long time (more than 5 minutes / visit)
• and they read a lot of pages (more than 6 / visit on average)

I wanted to display previews (excerpts) of my Wordpress posts on the frontpage of a magazine site that I was building for a client. This is easy enough to do, but I also wanted those excerpts to include a thumbnail of an image from the post.

There are plenty of published solutions that involve additional plug-in galleries or custom fields, but I wanted a simple solution that makes use of Wordpress’s built-in image gallery, and didn’t require a cut and paste of image urls in to custom fields.

My other requirement was that the images should be automatically thumbnailed to the correct size.

Images in Wordpress: the solution

Extracting images from a Wordpress post

Wordpress posts have their own image gallery (click the add media button, then choose the gallery tab).  Unfortunately, the functions to access it and the documentation are weak at the moment.

Fortunately, Sarah wrote an excellent article showing how we can extract all the attachments to a post.  I modified it slightly just to extract images:

$args = array(
‘post_type’ => ‘attachment’,
‘numberposts’ => -1,
‘post_status’ => null,
‘post_parent’ => $postID,
‘post_mime_type’ => ‘image’);

$images = get_children ($args);

The get_children() function here will return all the image attachments attached to post (identified by $postID), and assign them to our array $images.

We can then process the array of  image attachments to pull out the URL of the images:

if ($images == TRUE) {
foreach($images as $image) {
$imageurl[] = $image->guid;
}
}

Alternatively, if you just want the first image attached to your post (e.g. for our front page preview):

if ($images == TRUE) {
foreach($images as $image) {
// Use the first image
$imageurl = $image->guid;
break;
}
}

This is great, and we could now display our image using something like:

<img src=”<?php echo $imageurl; ?>” alt=”<?php the_title; ?>” />

Automatically creating the thumbnail

This is the final step, and fortunately Darren Hoyt has produced a script: timthumb, that will automatically create thumbnails on the fly for us.

Install timthumb as per Darren’s instructions, then within our template code, we can take our image and automatically thumbnail it:

<img src=”/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo $image;?>&w=70&h=70&zc=1″ alt=”<?php the_title();?>”/>

Note, I had a couple of problems with Darren’s script:

His usage examples fail HTML validation, but this is easily fixed by replacing the &’s with & as shown above.

It’s not creating proportional thumbnails for me correctly, but hopefully this can be fixed.

All in all, it’s a very useful script, and is used throughout the Wordpress magazine site: Daisy Green Magazine

Images in Wordpress: the benefits

There are a few benefits to this approach, particularly when developing a site for a client who will be writing the posts and having to ensure they are entered  correctly (in the case of the magazine there are several writers, so this is even more acute):

1. We are using Wordpress’s built-in gallery, so it should remain compatible with future versions
2. We don’t have confuse the post author by having multiple ways to enter images (as would be the case with a third party Wordpress plug-in gallery)
3. We don’t risk typos and other errors copying URL’s in to custom fields for a post
4. We don’t have to create multiple sized versions of our images, the thumbnail script does it for us on the fly

So, there you have it.  I hope you find this approach to create Wordpress post excerpt with automatic thumbnail image (without custom fields) useful.

Daisy Green is the brainchild of Nicola Alexander, and she’s pulled together a fantastic team of writers.  We love it because it’s fun and exciting, and also because our sister company 21 Inspired developed the website.  21 Inspired also guided Nicola in the development of the online business model.

The launch party attracted 200+ ethically concious bright young things to the Artworks Gallery in Newcastle last night.

We’ll be glued to the analytics over the coming months, and keeping fingers crossed for the success of our latest client on their social media and publishing adventure.

Check out the latest in ethical fashion, beauty and living.

Read what other people are saying about Daisy Green:

The Raw Bombshell: Daisy Green party review

The Makings of Crafty Clare: Win a pair of my recycled earrings

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Some of them, e.g. Declan Metcalfe and Andrea Tobin, even follow up on my advice.  Andrea subsequently contacted me on LinkedIn to ask for my top blogging tips, so here goes:

How to write

1. Keep it personal; The best blogs are usually personal insights and opinions on a subject that matters to the blogger
2. Keep the posts short; You want people to read them, reference and link to the weightier material.  Great diary blogs, e.g. dooce.com, are perhaps an exception
3. Write about a subject (e.g. PR, football, law, or the trials and tribulations of being a PA) rather than overtly promoting your business.  Blogs are not direct sales channels; you want a long term relationship with your readers
4. Write frequently; It doesn’t have to be every day, but regular short posts will help you to keep an audience
5. Learn from others; Check out the leading bloggers and mimic the best bits.  In professional services look at corporate engagement; or, writing about something that tastes great to you try chocolate & zucchini
6. Use photos to illustrate your posts (where appropriate); They’ll draw an audience. Personal ones are best, but don’t use ‘clipart’ recklessly
7. Be bold, emotive, and give away ‘not too secret’ secrets; You want to embrace and engage your audience.  Enable comments and even crowdsource if you can

Driving traffic to your blog

1. Register your blog on Technorati
2. Put links in your posts to stories on other blogs, and leave comments on other relevant blogs and forums; These will often be reciprocated
3. Enable pings and trackbacks on your site
4. Make your posts search engine friendly; Check out the guide from blogger or your host
5. If you have the technical ‘know-how’ add social news buttons to your posts, e.g. Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon

And finally, an important tip from Tony Pierce’s wonderfully eclectic “how to blog” list:

“27. nobody likes poems. dont put your poems on your blog. not even if theyre incredible. especially if theyre incredible. odds are theyre not incredible. bad poems are funny sometimes though, so fine, put your dumb poems on there. whatever.”

We are delighted to be able to announce that our new site for Perfect Poetry has gone live.

Perfect Poetry are headed by award winning poet, Shelley Rowntree.  They write personalised poems that make wonderful and unique gifts.

Check out their site, and see how easy and fun it is to buy a poem for someone you know and love.

As well as the main site, we also built a microsite that lets you buy a personalised poem directly or funnel across to the Perfect Poetry pages.

For the technically minded among you, we also have a great search engine optimisation story to tell about this site. That’ll be coming shortly… so watch this space!

Launched to as a foundation to Postura Health’s online marketing strategy, Posture Experts look set to grow into a significant online resource.

Check it out now and discover practical tips on how you adjust your posture to ensure a happy, healthier life.

That was the case with Isle of Man Cottages, who despite booming business for their holiday cottages, wanted a website to catch the early year bookings and fill the final slots in their availability calendar.

Designed, developed and delivered by 21 Inspired in just one weekend, isleofmancottages.co.uk is a clean professional brochure website that incorporates vivid imagery, Google Analytics and is search engine optimised.

“We’re absolutely delighted with our new website, and with the speed of service and helpfulness of the team at 21 Thoughts, who not only built the site but also helped us set up new email addresses, gave us PDF flyers to sent to clients, and guided us on how to use the tools.” Mike Brown, Isle of Man Cottages

How though, do you take a blog for a niche special interest subject and generate a worldwide audience, TV, radio and press coverage in just 21 days?

That’s exactly what we achieved with Chess Tales, a blog about the world of chess, and it illustrates ideas that all online retailers can benefit from.

Chess Tales was inspired by a Google query used by a visitor to Chess Online, an experimental eCommerce shop in the United States.  The query highlighted a question that the visitor wanted answering, and was used as the basis of the first post on Chess Tales, which went online on March 3 2007.

This process is something that any retailer who wants to be successful online should consider adopting. In an increasingly commoditised world, future success and brand loyalty will depend on the quality of relationships we build with our customers.  A blog (separate from your retail presence) gives you a great area to talk about developments with your customers, and build trust in a non-sales pressured environment.

Once you’ve established a blog though, you need to attract an audience.  Chess Tales is already pulling in a global readership on a daily basis.  The UK, United States, Canada and mainland Europe feature highly, but the blog is also getting regular visitors from surprising locations including the Far East, India, Russia, Africa and South America.  21 Thoughts expertise has helped Chess Tales maximise it’s search engine rankings and establish presence on social networking and bookmarking sites (another key tool for future online marketing), which in turn drives traffic to the site.

21 Thoughts also handled the PR that helped Chess Tales gain slots on ITV Tyne Tees Television, BBC Radio, and on the frontpage of regional newspapers, when it associated with a young chess star in her bid for success at the European Championships.