Thread

My university-issued test space doesn’t support any of the image resizing protocols recognized by EE. Because this was only listed as a “suggested” element in the EE server wizard, I didn’t worry about it.

Now, however, whenever I try to upload a file, I get the “Thumbnail could not be created for the image. Please make sure the thumbnail directory is writable.” error.  Ironically, the directory permissions are set, but I’ve read elsewhere that this error tends to occur when the protocols aren’t available.

I’ve also tried manually adding files to the directory and creating my own thumbnails and putting them in the _thumb directory, then trying to sync through the file upload prefs but no dice.

Is there a way of turning the thumbnailing feature off entirely?  In the Image Resizing Preferences, there isn’t an option for “none.”

If not, any further recommendations?  I don’t have access to the rest of the server, and sadly much of our tech support services are already out for Christmas break, so installing the protocol plugins isn’t an option, unless I can do it in my own directory.

Hi Auburn,

I’m not sure whether or not it’s possible to completely turn off the thumb nailing feature itself. Hang tight for me while I ask one of our devs if she’s got a suggestion.

Thanks again for choosing ExpressionEngine, and welcome to the community!

Tech support is on vacation and you’re still working hard?  Life is unfair!

OK- this is a really short term solution until you can get GD installed.  And we’ll need to either change the docs in that regard- or make them true.  I suspect we’ll change the docs, because a fair bit of the file interface works better if thumbs are an option.

But since they aren’t- a short term hack to get past the thumb building is to open system/expressionengine/libraries/filemanager.php and search for function create_thumb - then edit like this:

function create_thumb($file_path, $prefs, $thumb = TRUE, $missing_only = FALSE)
 {
return TRUE;

  $this->EE->load->library('image_lib');
  $this->EE->load->helper('file');

That will basically skip the whole thumb creation and pretend that it worked.  This may have some unintended consequences, but it tested out ok for me when I did it.  File sync still worked- it just didn’t create thumbs.  And I could upload and insert images into entries.  It looks like the file fields worked ok- though they don’t display the image.  And I wasn’t actually testing with GD not installed, so I can’t positively swear something isn’t in play checking for that.

And on the plus side- after I synced and checked no thumbs were created, I removed the ‘return true’ hack and did a fresh sync- and the thumbs were then populated just as they should be.  So after GD is available, remove the hack and sync and you should have your thumbs without it being a hassle of some sort.

Again- very short term fix and not tested without GD, but if you’re wanting to keep working while GD isn’t available, I’d give this a try.  Let me know if it works for you short term!

Robin, thanks so much for stepping in with that short-term fix!

Auburn, does that help alleviate the issue for now?