HOWTO: Integrate Website Screenshot Thumbnails on your site

[WebShotsPro]

We have opened up our screenshot generation system to the world!
If you are a developer and would like to add website screenshots to your application, we provide a free service to generate screenshots of urls.

Using WebShotsPro.com's Free Screenshot API

It is extremely easy to add these screenshots to your app. All you have to do is prepend our address to the URL you want a screenshot of.

For example, if you want to display a screenshot of http://webshotspro.com on your website, links list, blog, or forum posting, all you have to do is display the following image url:

http://thumbs.webshotspro.com/url/ht...ebshotspro.com



You will notice that any url will work, not just root domain names. If we do not have a screenshot of the url you are requesting, it is added to the queue and will get updated shortly.

Please note that this is a free service and we will do our best efforts to keep these images functioning. All images displayed through this api have been cached to ensure speedy delivery. All IPs are logged and anyone found abusing the service or submitting inappropriate urls will be banned from using the system.

For more advanced screenshot generation options, cache control, custom error graphics, and large scale screenshot integration you must register for an account or contact us to discuss one of our membership plans.

Please let us know what you think, and if there is anything else we can add to make this more useful.

-WebShotsPro Admins

[Geoserv]

My only "beef" would be that the screenshot is a cached screenshot.

Where do you get the cached version? And why can't it be live?

Geoserv.

[arcadepunk]

Wow that is amazing. How does it work? The only thing I see is that when you take a screenshot of a website the ads are not shown so it looks like your using something similar to what PHPProxy does. But I have to say this would be really useful. I will be sure to bookmark it.

[WebShotsPro]

Thanks for the comments. We have been looking into ways to provide 'realtime' screenshots where it is not cached.

As you can probably guess, this would take a lot more resources than the queue system we currently have implemented. We will likely make realtime screenshots a members only feature leaving the cache server free.

@arcadepunk: there are details on how it works along with screenshots of the backend interface we use to monitor and admin the system here:
http://www.webshotspro.com/faq/

[Geoserv]

That would be a great idea 'WebShotsPro', an idea I would most likely be willing to sign-up for.

Thanks,
Geoserv.