For our newspaper site, we always have a pretty or at least important photo at the top of the front page. In Wordpress, that means it's the most recent post, so we have to make sure all other posts have earlier publish dates. No problem with that; we can do that.

I have the excerpt option set to show only excerpts on the front page except for the first post, which will show the full post, so we get the image to show. However, it will also show the whole post, which we don't want if the post is rather long.

I came up with a klunky work-around: I create a post with just the image at the top and a short blurb. I create another post with the image and whole article, and make sure I publish the short one last. Of course, now I have 2 posts with the same image and part of the same content showing in the Recent Articles list in the sidebar, and everywhere else.

http://larchmontgazette.com/wp27/

Can you think of a better way? I thought of creating a new category called Top Image and assigning the short one to that, and then find a way to keep that category from showing at all in the post lists except on the front page.

Or could this be an option in a future release, or a code tweak now?

Did you investigate the "sticky" option of WP 2.7?

Also you can create a category for these images, and then use a plug-in or edit the loop to exclude the category.

There was some recent conversations here on doing just that...

I made it sticky, but now I have a gray background and the pushpin gizmo in the upper right, which I don't want.

I went back and found Flynn's attempt to help me with a similar desire to keep obits out of the recent posts list, but when I tried to implement it this time, it didn't work. He had me use the PHP Code widget and gave me the code to do it, and while it worked back then, it didn't work just now.

http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthr...tegory+plugins

EDIT: I just realized I can use the Post/Page styling to get rid of the gray and the sticky .gif!

Paulae, I wish I had an answer for you but I think Flynn will have to step in again.

I just wanted to give you props on your site!!! Keep up the great work!

you have to edit the styling for the sticky at A Theme Options -> Post/Page Styling -> POST Container: STICKY and remove the default settings....

Thanks, vinniev!

Thanks for the help, all. I think it's working OK now, although this is a rather clunky work-around.

Hi Paulae,

I am trying to do the same thing you have on your website currently; rotating images of featured stories with just summary excerpts below. Can you let me know how you did this?

Thank you,

SupraTT

Sure, it's the Featured Content Gallery plugin.

One other thisg you can try is to put the HTML for the image in the POST's manual excerpt area. With the correction in '[BUGFIX 3.4.1/3.4.2/3.4.4] Getting Configure Excerpts to work in all cases (http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=3377) It should always pull in the manual excerpt first.

Have you looked at the Frontpage Slideshow plugin?