I would love to take credit for this but I didn't write any of it! Im posting this here so its easy for me to find when I forget how to do it later :). This elegent solution came from "Ida" from this thread
http://plone.293351.n2.nabble.com/News-portlet-able-to-show-preview-image-td4853505.html
This solution works with Plone 4.3
Problem:
The "News" portlet should also show the image that was assigned to it.
Directions:
- Login to your site and go to the zmi
- Choose "portal_view_customizations"
- Choose "news.pt"
- Choose the "Customize" button
- Copy the following code below and paste where you want it to appear. I wanted mine to appear before the text so I placed it before the <a href ="" part of the code
<!-- ADD IMAGE HERE-->
<img src="" alt="" tal:define="item_object obj/getObject;" tal:condition="exists:item_object/image_thumb" tal:replace="structure python: path('nocall:item_object/tag')(scale='thumb',
css_class='tileImage')" />
<!-- END IMAGE HERE-->settings:
You can adjust your "scale" to a variety of sizes that come from "Image Handling" in the "Settings" on your plone site. For me those are;
- large
- preview
- mini
- thumb
- tile
- icon
- listing
BONUS: Add the Description to the portlet as well ..
Follow the directions above but use the following code to add the description (or summary) to the news portlet.
<!--ADD SUMMARY OR DESCRIPTION HERE--> <p> <span tal:replace="obj/Description"> Description goes here! </span> </p> <!-- END SUMMARY HERE-->