Choose to Display Post Thumbnail?

Question

I noticed the website http://gawker.com/ does something cool with images in posts - some posts have a large featured image above the title, others have none and just have images in the content.

My best bet on how to achieve this in WordPress is to add <?php the_post_thumbnail('large'); ?> above the title and make a selectable option to display or not display the_post thumbnail in the post edit screen. It would need to only apply to the post (and not the excerpt)... I'm not sure how I would create that option. I would appreciate if anybody knows how this would be done, can direct me to a somewhat relevant tutorial, or has a better idea of how to achieve this.

Answer 1

This is modified code from twentyten that does what you're looking for. Put this in header or wherever you want the image to run. See string post-thumbnail -- that is size. Make sure it is defined as 940 x 180 in functions.php

if ( is_singular() && current_theme_supports( 'post-thumbnails' ) &&
        has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID ) &&
        ($image = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'post-thumbnail' ) ) &&
        $image[1] >= 940 ) :
    // Houston, we have a new header image!
    echo get_the_post_thumbnail( $post->ID );
elseif ( get_header_image() ) : ?>
    <img src="<?php header_image(); ?>" width="940" height="180" alt="" />
<?php endif; ?>

It falls back to header_image if that is set. Feel free to change sizes.