Recently during the analysis of the website TheCreatology, I found that there was no thumbnail image on blog page, instead it was the image alt text. When I looked at the markup using firebug and I found that the auto thumbnail image generated using timthumb returns 404 error.
No Thumbnail using TimThumb issue with Hostgator
TheCreatology is using TimThumb script to auto generate thumbnail as in the article How to auto generate thumbnail in Thesis Theme without Plugin. But, everything seemed to be okay according to the procedure, and also I tested it on a local test server. Finally, I realized that timthumb script fails to execute on server, and returns 404 error. The website is hosted on Hosgator, so I logged in and contacted technician to resolve this issue for me. Below is what I exactly did to solve timthumb issue with hosgator:
- Login to the Hostgator Cpanel and click on the Live Chat Support. Further select Technician in drop down list (as it being a technical issue), and Enter your name, your website’s Url and the question.
- Once you are connected to the chat support, ask the technician to whitelist timthumb file used for thumbnail generation for mod_security. Since this is a known issue with Hostgator WordPres hosting, so they will recognize the problem easily.
- In order to whitelist the Thumbnail file, the technician will ask you to verify your identity with the billing info, so just keep the details handy with you.
- Once verification is done, technician will ask you to check for the Files and Folders’ permission. Make sure all folder’s permission is set to 755 and all file’s permission is set to 644, especially the timthumb.php file should be set to 644. Once done, confirm the technician about permission is set.
- You will get the confirmation from the technician in few minutes, and the problem will be resolved soon after it.
I had a long conversation with the technician and asked him how to solve timthumb error, but couldn’t get a better solution than this. But I was happy to get the thumbnails back on the site, as the blog looked incomplete without thumbnails.
If you are so stuck or unable to resolve this issue, then you can post your feedback as comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.