thumbnails
 

what's the best way to make thumbnails without distortion? right now i'm just resizing the image and that doesn't work.

depends on the tool. scaling images down and cropping them works a-okay in photoshop... but thumbnailing images one by one is not a way to get ahead in this biz...

google for phpThumb, tons of options.

thumbnailer from the company smalleranimals, google it, does large batches.