Anyone know how to make a gallery post where you make one image the cover of the photo gallery and whenever it is clicked it links to the gallery? The use this method on thechive.com. I’m really not familiar with custom post types, is this where it is done?
Post photo galleries
The site you linked to seems to do this by making one image the post thumbnail (Featured image in the admin screen). So you attach multiple images to your post, and then choose one of them as the featured image. You then modify your theme to show only the post thumbnail and no text in lists. This does not require any plugins, just a little modification to your theme files.
Check out the Cleaner Gallery plugin. It may be able to help you achieve what you’re looking for.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cleaner-gallery/