4 Website Thumbnails Generators With An API To Use

Yesterday, I was trying to add automatic website thumbnails generation on an aggregator site I am working on (just like on DZone) and I did a little research to find some services that provide an API and to test their services on a quality, speed and pricing policy basis. I managed to find 4 services that really do the job and some of them are already available as plugins for Wordpress, Drupal and other popular software packages.

1) ShrinkTheWeb

ShrinkTheWeb is a free, easy to use and a high limits screenshots service that comes with great documentation and sample uses of the service to get you started at once. With this service, you can:

• Update screenshots if they are old. 5.000 updates per month
• 250.000 requests per month
• Top level and sub domain captures
• You have 6 sizes to choose from

As soon as you have registered with the service and logged in, there is a control panel for you with sample code on how to use the service, statistics about your usage of the service and links to available plugins and code to download and create your own service!

Sizes

Available sizes in the free plan are (bold text is the code to use with the API):

• 75 x 56 – mcr
• 90 x 67 – tny
• 120 x 90 – sm
• 200 x 150 – lg
• 320 x 240 – xlg

You get custom sizes and more options if you get the PRO plan.

Plugins

The service is available as a plugin for popular software like Drupal, vBulletin and Wordpress. There is also a Django plugin and ready PHP5 and PHP4 classes for you to use. This page here is the place to go and get them.

API

The easiest way to use the API is by passing your API key inside the src value of a IMG tag:

<img src='http://www.shrinktheweb.com/xino.php?embed=1&STWAccessKeyId=YOUR_KEY&stwsize=sm&stwUrl=http://www.bing.com'>

No problem if your API key shows up anywhere, since it only works with the URL you set in your control panel.

Here is a use of the service.

2) websnapr 2.0

WebSnapr 2.0

WebSnapr is one of the best services around. Not only it allows 100.000 screenshots per month with an API key, it allows you to use the service without a key too, and you can get up to 80 screenshots per hour!!! Websnapr can export thumbnails in 2 sizes when used as a free service and puts a branding on the snapshot.

Sizes

The sizes are:

• 90 x 70 – T and
• 202 x 152 – S

There are more sizes available on paid plans ranging from 90 x 70 to 1024 x 768, you can also change the branding on the snapshot with your own text if you use the premium plan.

Plugins

There are also a lot of ready made plugins and uses of the service for you to use. There are Wordpress, Drupal, Blogger and Windows Live Writer plugins available here.

API

In order to use the API, all you have to do is register with the service and get an API key. Then you will be able to use the service like this:

http://images.websnapr.com/?size=S&key=key&url=jeez.eu

Here is a demo use of the API.

3) Thumbalizr

Thumbalizr

Thumbalizr is the only service I found that supports full page screenshots. What does full page screenshots mean? This is a good example:

Even if not well documented yet (the service is in beta stage) the API seems to work pretty well. The best thing about the API is that allows you to choose any custom size ranging from 1 to 1280 to users with an API key and a ranging from 1-300 for users without an API key!!! Although the service is not so fast as the previous mentioned, it can surely attract a lot of attention since it looks quite promising.

There are 2 more plans with additional features like:

• Full Page Capture
• Quality setting
• Delay setting
• Capturing parts of a page

API

This table shows what features each plan supports and a typical usage of the API for a registered user with an API key is:

<img src="http://api.thumbalizr.com/?url=http://jeez.eu&width=1280&api_key=API_KEY" />

Give it a try here.

4) ThumbnailsPro

ThumbnailsPro

ThumbnailsPro is a premium snapshots service that provides a free version too.The paid version features full page screenshots, high speed and full capture of the page including : flash, javascript and silverlight objects.

The free service allows you to generate 100×75 thumbs for 1000 screenshots per month and the code needed to do this is:

<img src="http://thumbnailspro.com/thumb.php?url=jeez.eu&s=100" border="0" alt="website thumbnails" />

ThumbnailsPro requires that you place a link back to the service if you use the free service. This is an example use.

Anyone knows other snapshot services with free APIs? Please let us know.

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