Create a grid layout for a wordpress category

1) Step one… create a custom Category page for the category of your choice.  This is a very useful trick.  All you need to do is to create a new file called category-10.php (replacing the 10 with the id of the category you wish to affect).  The easist way to do this is to create a copy of archive.php and rename the copy as category-10.php.  Now when ever category 10 is called this page will be supplied.

2) Step two.. enable tumbnail support.  This is very simple.  All you need to do is to add:

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

this will enable thumbnail support across you theme.

to functions.php in your theme before the final php tag.

Now set the size of your thumbnails using

set_post_thumbnail_size( 50, 50 );

(note for additional options see here)

Thats it! All you now need to do is to go and edit category-10.php and call the thumbnail using

<?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>

If you want to create a grid layout just comment out everything and wrap the thumbnail link with the link to the post.
A typical your Archive.php might look like:

<?php get_header(); ?>
<div class="grid_16 content_wrapper">
<div id="left" class="grid_9 omega alpha">
  <div id="content">
    <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
    <div class="post">
      <?php $post = $posts[0]; // Hack. Set $post so that the_date() works. ?>
      <?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
 <!--     <h2 class="search">
        <?php single_cat_title(); ?>
        </h2> -->
      <?php /* If this is a tag archive */ } elseif( is_tag() ) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Posts Tagged &#8216;
        <?php single_tag_title(); ?>
        </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a daily archive */ } elseif (is_day()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('F jS, Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a monthly archive */ } elseif (is_month()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a yearly archive */ } elseif (is_year()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is an author archive */ } elseif (is_author()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Author Archive</h2>
      <?php /* If this is a paged archive */ } elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged'])) { ?>
        <h2 class="search">Blog Archives</h2>
        <?php } ?>
    </div>
    <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
    <div class="entry">
      <div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
        <h2><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
          <?php the_title(); ?>
          </a></h2>
        <p class="postinfo"><span class="upper">
          <?php the_time('M j, Y') ?>
          </span> <span class="category">
          <?php the_category(', ') ?>
          </span>
          <?php edit_post_link('Edit', ' | ', ''); ?>
        </p>
        <?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this entry &raquo;</p>'); ?>
        <?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>
        <p class="postinfo">
          <?php the_tags( 'Tags: ', ', ', ''); ?>
        </p>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="clear"></div>
    <?php endwhile; else: ?>
    <div class="entry">
      <p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p>
    </div>
    <?php endif; ?>
  </div>
</div>

<br clear="all" />
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

To achieve an image grid layout change your archive file to something like

<?php get_header(); ?>
<div class="grid_16 content_wrapper">
<div id="left" class="grid_9 omega alpha">
  <div id="content">
    <?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
    <div class="post">
      <?php $post = $posts[0]; // Hack. Set $post so that the_date() works. ?>
      <?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>

      <?php /* If this is a tag archive */ } elseif( is_tag() ) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Posts Tagged &#8216;
        <?php single_tag_title(); ?>
        </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a daily archive */ } elseif (is_day()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('F jS, Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a monthly archive */ } elseif (is_month()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('F, Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is a yearly archive */ } elseif (is_year()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Archive for
        <?php the_time('Y'); ?>
      </h2>
      <?php /* If this is an author archive */ } elseif (is_author()) { ?>
      <h2 class="search">Author Archive</h2>
      <?php /* If this is a paged archive */ } elseif (isset($_GET['paged']) && !empty($_GET['paged'])) { ?>
        <h2 class="search">Blog Archives</h2>
        <?php } ?>
    </div>
 <div class="entry-spotlight">
 <h2>Spot Light</h2>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
      <div class="spotlight" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
        <a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>">
          <?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?></a><p><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title_attribute(); ?></a></p>

        <p class="postinfo">
          <?php the_tags( 'Tags: ', ', ', ''); ?>
        </p>
      </div>

    <?php endwhile; else: ?>
    <div class="entry">
      <p>Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.</p>
    </div>
    <?php endif; ?>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
  </div>
</div>

<br clear="all" />
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Then edit the css so that each image floats to the left and had a suitable margin around it to look nice.

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