Home Page Question: How to place an image alongside an excerpt?

Here’s what I use:

<?php
						if ($images = get_children(array(
						'post_type' => 'attachment',
						'numberposts' => 1,
						'post_status' => null,
						'post_parent' => $post->ID,)))

						foreach($images as $image) {
						$attachment=wp_get_attachment_image_src($image->ID, $size);
						?><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/scripts/timthumb.php?src=<?php echo $attachment[0]; ?>&h=200&w=200&zc=1" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>
						<?php } else { ?>
           					<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/preview.jpg" alt=""/></a>
           				<?php } ?>

You’ll need to make sure you download the timthumb.php script (just google it) and put it in your theme folder in a folder called “scripts”.

Basically what it does is it will pull the first image that’s uploaded via the uploader in the write panel… Then it uses timthumb to resize/crop the image to your specifications.

Cool! I will try that. Thanks.

OK, I got it working to a point. If you go to https://www.pattyspizza.com/blog1/ you’ll see it’s there. Two issues still remain. The first is that theimage is showing up twice and I only want it to appear once. Secondly, my social bookmarks plugin is also appearing and that’s fine for the blog page but not here on the homepage. How do I lose that?

Finally, you see the empty box next to where the photo is? I want to use the script again for that area using the latest post from a different category using the loop. Problem is if I do that, the scripts basically cancel each other out. So you just have two background images. How can I run a duplicate of your script alongside the other script on the same home.php page?

Thanks for all the advice so far. I really appreciate the assistance.

Solved the picture problem by using the_excerpt instead of the_content. Still got to lose the Bookmarks section beneath the copy though.

Solved another issue. Just copied all the code from the div with the loop and Tim Thumb script, placed it in the next div and changed $myquery to $myquery2 (or anything you want) and it worked. So the final thing is to remove that Bookmark area somehow.

Solved the last piece of the puzzle! There was a setting in Social Bookmarks to get rid of the Bookmarks in list view and only show if for single posts. Perfect!

Sorry I wasn’t around to answer your latest questions… I’ve been pretty swamped with support requests for my plugin lately.

I’m glad to see you got it figured out!