Boldly Removed Unused Functions

brafton_img_location()
Local image path no longer needed to add post thumbnail to an article. image download handled by wordpress function download_url() and media_handle_sideload which download image given a url and store the image respectively

brafton_img_exists()
Replaced with a call to get_post_meta() and has_post_thumbnail given post_id 

brafton_post_modified()
never used -- and adds unnecessary db queries. Can be replaced with WordPress functions if needed later

populate_postmeta() 
Updating post meta is now handled by image_download() function