Automated on-demand generation of posts thumbnails.
As of April 2026, Automatic Thumbnail Generator is a WordPress image plugin with 10 active installations and a 0/5 rating0. It has been downloaded 6.6K+ times in total. Requires WordPress 3.0.1+ and PHP false+. Available on WordPress.org since 2010. Last updated 15 years ago — may have compatibility concerns. Top alternative: Firelight Lightbox.
This plugin will scan your thumbnail-less posts and look for a suitable image to use as a thumbnail.
It will look for images linked in the post content and will download and add them to the local library.
Post scanning is performed only when the_post_thumbnail or get_the_post_thumbnail are called for
that particular post.
So you designed your new thumbnail-based template, but you have tons of thumbnail-less posts and
don’t want to spend too much time on scraping your old posts for a thumbnail picture. Maybe you
think you will probably forget to set a thumbnail for your new posts. Maybe both, as was my case :).
When a thumbnail for a post is queried and nothing is found this plugin will scrape the post for
an <img> tag and its href property. Once a suitabile image is found (bas…
| WordPress | 3.0.1+ requiredTested up to 3.0.5 |
| PHP | false+ required |
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.