Using Thumbnails on Your Website

No, we’re not talking about scratching your website’s eyes out with your thumbnail… We’re talking about the small pictures of websites that you see on some sites like the Momz.com directory for example. Momz.com presents a thumbnail of every one of the 1,500 or so websites listed in the directory. This helps the visitor determine which sites are worth visiting with a quick glance.

These “thumbnails” help filter out foreign sites, offensive sites, and generally offer us a better surfing experience.

We use Thumbshots, a free tool to pull the thumbnail images from their database and present them when needed. All they ask for in return for this highly useful service is a link back to their site on your website.

To show you how easy it is I’ll explain what I did to add the thumbnails to this post:

1. Register at Thumbshots
2. Once registered they share the small piece of code needed to add the thumbs to any post or web page you want.
3. Using WordPress you just place your cursor where you want to insert the thumbnail and press the picture icon just as you would to insert any photograph.
4. This time you’ll enter the code from Thumbshots and after the “=” equal sign simply type in the URL of the website and like magic their tool pulls the thumb of the website and places it where you wanted it.
5. To move the thumbnail over to the left and have the text wrap around it using WordPress you click on the image, click on the LEFT justify icon or button and the picture is moved to left and text wraps around automatically.

Give it a try on your website. Post any questions in the comments area and we’ll try to help.