Dear WordPress Theme Developers, Stop Using TimThumb

https://twitter.com/#!/kovshenin/status/175993539040260097

Just a reminder, since this weekend I had to help out with yet another TimThumb-powered WordPress theme, broken by a “security patch” at the web hosting provider. This time it was Acquisto by Press75. The problems of Acquisto are not limited to thumbnails.

About the author

Konstantin Kovshenin

WordPress Core Contributor, ex-Automattician, public speaker and consultant, enjoying life in Moscow. I blog about tech, WordPress and DevOps.

3 comments

  • I use timthumb probably way to much. It is super easy to resize images on the fly, Especially when you create a new theme and the images don’t fit in very well. But you reminded me that I did not want to use timthumb anymore and on the site that I just finished yesterday and went live with, I use timthumb extensively.

    So right now, I just deleted timthumb and added all the sizes add_image_size and then used ajax rebuild thumbnails and that was it. Since the site is new, it was super easy for me to do this. But I now have the knowledge to do it to the other sites that I manage.

    Thanks so much for reminding me at such a perfect time!

    Thanks!!

    • Weston, you’re welcome! add_image_size is the easiest way to deal with thumbnails in the WordPress API, but there’s a bunch of other stuff like crop, resize, flip and even rotate :)

      Yes thumbnail regeneration plugins are such life savers when it comes to switching or modifying themes, I remember around a year ago I had to regenerate over 2000 images, not too much, but took a while!

      Thanks for stopping by!

  • Hey, my website uses TimThumb, I want to stop using it because I can’t rebuild thumbnails using it and some of my old images are stretched and stuff.

    Any advice on how to proceed?

    Thanks.