Ensure images are squared by ...

[bobbingwide]

In archive displays one image is displayed in the hero section then there are multiples of 4 below. The images displayed in the blocks should all be squared. The simplest method would appear to be to use a “post-thumbnail” image size which is rectangular.

Requirements

• Images displayed in the block to be the same size
• Automatic creation of the post-thumbnail image

Proposed solution

• use set_post_thumbnail_size() in response to after_setup_theme
• see what happens in the block
• use a batch routine to create the new post thumbnail size for existing images

[bobbingwide]

Using set_post_thumbnail_size( 1024, 1024, true ); and setting the Genesis Theme Option for Featured Image size to 'post-thumbnail' ensures we see images cropped to squares in the block.

Now I have to decide what I want for the hero and on the single bigram page.
Answer: Square on the hero page. Full size on the single bigram page.

[bobbingwide]

OK. So it appears to work nicely for new image which are larger than 1024 pixels in each direction.
But I can't get wp media regenerate to work.

Unexpected output

wp media regenerate 1997
Found 1 image to regenerate.
Warning: Can't find "Soft Baked" (ID 1997).
Error: No images regenerated (1 failed).

[bobbingwide]

Attempting to use regenerate-thumbnails plugin gives a little more detail as to the possible cause of the problem.

"Soft Bank" (ID 2474) failed to resize. The error message was: The originally uploaded image file cannot be found at C:\apache\htdocs\bigram/wp-content/uploads/http://www.bigram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Soft-Bank.jpg

Need to find where it's getting http://www.bigram.co.uk/wp-content/uploads

[bobbingwide]

Updating regenerate-thumbnails from 2.2.6 to 3.1.0 ( GitHub version ) gives

<b>Warning</b>:  filemtime(): stat failed for 
C:\apache\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\regenerate-thumbnails/dist/build.js in <b>
C:\apache\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\regenerate-thumbnails\regenerate-thumbnails.php</b>
on line <b>195</b><br /> 

using the built version from wordpress.org helped a bit
ERROR: The fullsize image file cannot be found in your uploads directory at https://qw//bigram/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Soft-Baked.jpg. Without it, new thumbnail images can't be generated.

It appears that the values for _wp_attached_file are URLs not relative file names.

This is true for files uploaded in 2016/06.

Once resolved the cropping still doesn't do what we want, which is to force the image to be square.
Basically we want the biggest square image.