The next plugin in the WLTC Plugin Competition is the Max Image Size Control plugin. The concept behind this plugin is that it lets you choose the image sizes that WordPress generates when you upload the image based the post or category the image belongs to.

Although the author doesn’t explain their intention in the WLTC post I suspect this is a direct reaction to all those magazine style themes where one size image is used in one place and another size in another place. It is a good idea and it works pretty well.

At first glance the interface can mislead you into thinking it is more limited than it is. The following screenshot shows the plugin’s option page which is accessed through the settings menu:

The first time you use this it appears as though you can only set one value for a list of posts and a list of categories; however, when you create the first override and save it, another duplicate of this appears beneath it to override other posts or categories with a different size.

The plugin is still at version 0.1.1 which suggests to me the author still has some work in mind for the interface, and this is a good thing as it is a tad clunky.

For one thing you do need to look up ID numbers which aren’t used much any more. Once you start considering the alternatives for the interface you quickly come to the point that overriding image sizes for individual posts is probably easiest done from within the post screen itself. It is a pain to open another window, find the ID, create the override and go back to editing.

Having said all that though the instances where you want to override the size for a specific post are probably few. Most likely you would use categories anyway so this is a minor issue at best.

Aside form these small niggles though the plugin works exactly as advertised. The following image was uploaded with only one value overriden; the width of the medium size image was set to 638px. It has been resized to that dimension.

A fairly simple plugin, based on a solid evolution of an existing function, that works as advertised. What more can you ask for?