Unfortunately, I can't really get this technique to work.

I am using Wp2.8 and for some reason when examining the data in the wp_posts table...Post_type='post' and the post_mime_type is blank..even when I attach from the media gallery or upload.

I gather this is the reason why get_children will sometimes not retrieve a image, even though there is one in the post.

I also examined the wp_postmeta table as well and also the meta_key did not have a "_wp_attachment_" and there was not a reference to the image in the meta_value column either.

Do you have any ideas as to why this is happening to me?

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/attachments/

I'm working on a new version of the plugin and incorporating the images' meta data seems to be a logical next step. Keep up the good work here!

The thing with stripping out the tags was something, I thought about.

Now, after reading your comment twice, I finally got it. Upload must happen in the "Edit Post" panel in order to get the image attached to the post. - Not in the Media Library, because that won't link the attachment to the post.

The editor could - as you told - change the order in the gallery to get control of what image is used for the post thumbnail in an archive etc. He also can decide himself, if the image should be presented in the content.

That's a really interesting approach and makes the use of custom fields needless in many cases.

the_content() listed all images in the post, you must added in the editor. You can upload over the backend of WordPress, include not in the post editor and include via template with the functions on this post. The second way ist, you exclude the images with regxp from the content. Please see this post for a solution.

I wonder why there are not more comments - this has become an extreme important issue (i think not only for me.).

Now I understand how to access a post image anywhere in any size. I was always searching for a way to insert some images in different sizes for the homepage, post page, etc. Until now, I've done this via custom fields and uploading the image into a FTP-Folder.

Is there a way to "disconnect" the image from the text? I mean, it's really difficult to layout an image e.g. on the left side and the text on the right side with the tools given by wordpress.
You could do this with the "more" - Tag, as seen in many templates.

My "dream-workflow" would be uploading an image with the WP-uploader that is then linked to the post, but not forced to be displayed when I use "the_content();".
This would give me simply more control about where the image is displayed.

I could filter out the tags in the content, but this would cause some other problems, if I did want to display an image in some posts...

Any idea is greatly appreciated, I think this is really close to that what I like to achieve.