Perfect thanks it works! I appreciate your time and help.

on option 2, I should have said 'link url' attribute of the image (not file url).

Sorry to jump in here but I saw this post while looking for a solution to a different issue. Have you tried either:

1) Redirection Plugin to automatically redirect users from the blog post to the appropriate page ?

2) Using the file url attribute of the image in the media library to point to the correct page? This idea may not work if the thumbnails are automatically generated but I thought I'd throw it out just in case.

Hope I didn't confuse things.

Good luck.

yes the ID must be a number. In edit pages, just hover over the page link to see the page id in the status bar of the browser (last number).

I tried adding that to the short code and I replaced the id=34 with the page name "blogging" since I believe I have an SEO plugin that changes it from page number to page name. I'm not sure if that makes a difference but it does not work. My site is http://myconditioning.com/ If you notice the thumbnails are from my first 3 posts ( a hacky way since I did not know how to assign pages as a thumbnail) If I knew how I would have just created 3 pages ("The Cause" "The Blog" "The Steps") instead of making 3 blog post. Anyway the end result I want to achieve is to get the thumbnail that say "The Blog" to link to my blogging page which shows my most recent posts. Must I use page id numbers? Any other recommendations to achieve this result?

yes it is. you can add a list of page ID in the shortcode like this:
[bfthumbs id="34,78,102"]

For your frontpage layount it consist of a slider and three thumbnails below. Those thumbnails are from blog posts (ie they do not lead to the contact page or to the about page, but they lead to a corresponding blog post)

I would like to know if it is possible to create thumbnails on the frontpage that lead to actual Pages for example the "Contact" page or to the "blog" If so, how do I go about doing that?

I simply want to have a thumbnail on the front page that leads to my most recent blog post. Currently the thumbnail comes from my first blog post and it link to that first blog post.

What? Please explain a bit better...

I have updated to the current version but now I do not understand how to have a thumbnail on the front page that leads to a page. I simply want to have a thumbnail on the front page that leads to my most recent blog post. Currently the thumbnail comes from my first blog post and it link to that first blog post. Thank you for your time.

I have thought about it...a placeholder is better than lining the posts to the top. I though of a generated image with the title part of the image...would be cool.

If we have both type of posts - with thumbnail image and without thumbnail image, then search results, category pages etc show post thumb without picture lined to bottom. So there are empty places for pictures. Would be nice option to implement some default image for such place or to fill whole area with text excerpt. Or to line these posts to top for instance.