WordPress Twenty Eleven PhP – forcing php code to skip first post on homepage?

You’ve practically got the solution in the code 😉

Notice that the entire content of the first post is visilbe, but for the rest only the excerpt displays. That’s from this (after tidying):

<?php 
if( $wp_query->current_post == 0 && !is_paged() ) { 
    the_content(); 
} else { 
    the_excerpt(); 
}
?>

So let’s just apply that logic to the thumbnail part:

<?php if( $wp_query->current_post != 0 || !is_paged() ) { ?>

     <div class="excerpt-thumb">
          <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/121776/<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php printf( esc_attr__( 'Permalink to %s', 'twentyeleven' ), the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) ); ?>" rel="bookmark">
               <?php the_post_thumbnail('excerpt-thumbnail', 'class=alignleft'); ?>
          </a>
     </div>

<?php } ?>