How to display a thumbnail from a Youtube using a shortcode

Are you often displaying Youtube videos on your blog? If yes, what about displaying a preview thumbnail to your readers? Here is a great shortcode that will display a thumbnail from a Youtube video, using Youtube api.

First, you need to create the shortcode. To do so, copy the code below and paste it into your functions.php file.

/*
    Shortcode to display youtube thumbnail on your wordpress blog.
    Usage:
    [youtube_thumb id="VIDEO_ID" img="0" align="left"]
    VIDEO_ID= Youtube video id
    img=0,1,2 or 3
    align= left,right,center
*/
function wp_youtube_video_thumbnail($atts) {
     extract(shortcode_atts(array(
          'id' => '',
          'img' => '0',
          'align'=>'left'
     ), $atts));
    $align_class='align'.$align;
    return '<img src="<a href="http://img.youtube.com/vi/'.$id.'/'.$img.'.jpg&quot" rel="nofollow">http://img.youtube.com/vi/'.$id.'/'.$img.'.jpg&quot</a>; alt="" />';
}
add_shortcode('youtube_thumb', 'wp_youtube_video_thumbnail');

Once done, you can use the shortcode. It accept 3 parameters: The video ID, the image size (0 for 480*360px, 1 for 120*90) and the image alignment.

[youtube_thumb id="rNWeBVBqo2c" img="0" align="center"]