gazellethemes

One thing I did with some of my previous wordpress magazine themes is use a PHP output buffer to pull out the first img URL with code like this:

function match($regex, $str, $i = 0) {
	if(preg_match($regex, $str, $match) == 1)
		return $match[$i];
	else
		return false;
}

function get_the_image_url() {
	ob_start();
	the_content();
	$imgBeg = strpos(ob_get_contents(), '<img');
	$imgStuff = substr(ob_get_contents(), $imgBeg);
	ob_end_clean();
	$imgEnd = strpos($imgStuff, '>');
	$postImg = substr($imgStuff, 0, $imgEnd+1);
	$url = match('/src="(.*?)" /msi', $postImg, 1);
	return $url;
}

And then I like to use a PHP thumbnail image generator/cache. Just call the image within the loop:

<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><img class="thumb" src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/resize.php?src=<?php echo get_the_image_url(); ?>&amp;h=160&amp;w=160&amp;zc=1" height="160" width="160" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>"></img></a>

That’s the way I do it. PS: the get_the_image_url() funtion had many more options, I just stripped them out for simplicity. It could use some refactoring

Here is the code I used for my magazine theme:

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=".get_cat_id('Name Of Category')."&showposts=5");
while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>

	<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
	<small>Posted by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?> on <?php the_time('M jS, Y'); ?> | <a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>#comments"><?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?> Comments</a></small>
	<?php the_excerpt('Read More-->'); ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

Be careful to always use the $variable = new WP_Query(); while($variable->have_posts()) : $variable->the_post(); when possible, especially when there are multiple loops, just use a different variable name.

Good luck!