***UPDATE:  If you have a theme built after March 2011 then we are using Post Thumbnails to create the thumbnails on your homepage.  Please view that tutorial here.

Your homepage is set up to pull different “pieces” of posts onto it and display a thumbnail image next to it. The image will display only on the homepage and not when the full post is displayed. In addition, only the text of the post will be pulled into the homepage and hyperlinks, pictures, videos, etc that are in the actual post will only be displayed when you view the whole post.

To add the thumbnail images to the homepage you are going to use “custom fields.” Here’s how to do it:

1. Large Scroller at top: This is the Featured Content Gallery Plugin. See the post for that.

2. The bottom homepage thumbnail pulls a category to it. This is managed by going to appearances>theme options.

3. Adding an Image:
-Create your image: To find the size of the images used go to the site and right click on the image you want to replace and then select “view properties.” I generally use square images that are 110×110 or 70×70. You can use any size images you want in these sections but the key is to make them all the same size so they lay out correctly.
-Go to a post or page you want an image associated with. At the top of the content area you will see “upload/insert” and a little gray box next to it. Click on this box and upload your picture.
-Scroll down to where it says: “link url” then click “file url”and copy that url.
-Close the image uploader and return to your post/page
-Scroll down to custom fields and look for the blank box that says “value” and past your link url in there.
-To the left of that enter the custom field name. The name for the bottom picture is either “hpbottom” or “thumbnail depending on your theme and the section you are in.
-Click add custom field.
-Save changes to your post/page.