Something that has always bothered me about Wordpress are the automated thumbnails. They are way too tiny, and I still want to have clickable images that look normal when I post them. By default Wordpress will make a thumbail 128 pixels wide:

I like to make my images 500 pixels wide for this blog, but it would be nice if I can choose to upload some bigger pictures, and allow you guys to click the 500 pixel version to see the larger version by default. Luckily I found Baron’s Blog that shows just how to do this. It’s pretty easy, it just requires modifying one file in Wordpress:

Login to your site via FTP and go into your wp-admin/includes folder. You’ll see a file called image.php. Download that and open it up in any text editor. Around line 153 you’ll see a line like this:

$max_side = apply_filters( ‘wp_thumbnail_max_side_length’, 128, $attachment_id, $file );

Simply change the 128 to whatever number you want your thumbnails to be and re-upload. I changed mine to 500:

$max_side = apply_filters( ‘wp_thumbnail_max_side_length’, 500, $attachment_id, $file );

That’s it, so now when I upload my 640×480 picture, it will make a 500 pixel thumbnail that will click through to the full 640×480 picture:

I’m sure there are better image management solutions via plugins, but this suits my needs for now.