Thumbnails for [img][/img] images

I'm looking at converting 20 years worth of articles, currently stored as HTML in a MySQL DB to AMS. Each of them contains images in <img src="IMAGE" />, which I can easily convert to BBCODE for use in AMS.

I've done some test converting to AMS, and all looks good so far



However, its seems that AMS only makes the thumbnails if the images are attached - is that correct?

Both of these articles have images in the article as BBCODE img tags.

Am I going to need to convert all of these to attachments to create thumbnails for all of these? Or is there a setting I'm missing that will grab a thumbnail from say, the first image in the article?

Thanks

 

Makes sense! Thanks Bob

 

Having looked into the XF attachment system, I think what I'm going to do is change our current thumbnail image name to {article_id}.jpg, and then in the templates, check if the article is post-import and if so use the normal way of showing it, if it is before then link to {article_id}.jpg

I'm just posting this here in case (a) someone else wants to do this, or (b) this could be a very bad idea, and I don't yet realise it.