I was asked by a reader:

I’m using the THiCK theme for my new design blog. I noticed you were able to add thumbnail images above your blog posts on the home page. What would I need to do to enable this on my blog?

Well Jon, this can be done very simple, since the theme is already using the Tim Thumb script.

What you will need to do is find in your index.php file, the second loop. Which you can find on line 40.

<?php query_posts('offset=1&showposts=' . get_option('woo_other_entries') . '&cat=-' . $GLOBALS['ex_asides'] ); ?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>	

	<div class="post">
		<h2><a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
		<div class="post-meta"><?php the_time('j/m/y'); ?> <span>|</span> <?php comments_popup_link('0 Comments', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></div>
		<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
	</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

Now we are going to add in the code. At line 43 we are going to add:

<?php if (get_option('woo_resize')) { // Check if we should use the image resizer ?>
                    <a title="Continue reading this entry..." href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><img src="<?php echo bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/thumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>&amp;h=80&amp;w=280&amp;zc=1&amp;q=90" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>
                <?php } else { ?>
                    <a title="Continue reading this entry..." href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><img src="<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>
                <?php } ?>

That’s it, just make sure that in the THiCK options panel you choose the “resize” option, or the image might break the layout. Or you may change the this code: $post->ID, "image", to: $post->ID, "image_thumb", and use a separate image for the lower blog.

This is an easy one, just add one line to your single.php file where you would like the Gravatar to show up.

<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_id(), $size = '96', $default = '<path_to_url>' ); ?>

Want to show what any user was searching for?
It is simple, just add this line where your title would be.

<h1>Browsing search results for <strong>"<?php the_search_query() ?>"</strong>.</h1>

The important line is the_search_query()