Planet-PHP Website Thumbnails
Updating my blog today got me thinking about what the other planet-php blog out there looked like. I was in a great spot to do a quick overview since I happened to have a script that makes the thumbnails using an embedded mozilla (this script is a long story but sufice it to say this was a nice simple one in python, but I have have a little c++ app that uses mozilla to make pdfs).
After that it was just a matter of getting a list of all the planet-php websites, oddly enough planet-php doesn’t export this list in any xml format that I could find, but since the DOM extension in php5 can load up HTML it wasn’t a big deal. I just copy and pasted the source for the list into a file and I was ready to go.
After that it was just waiting, and fixing problems. The main ones where George Schlossnagle’s blog which always even though I could load it in my browser and Harry Fuecks’ phpPatterns site since it seems to be dead. Other then that it was just cleaning up escaping.
And now for the fun part, take a look at thumbnails of everyones sites.
At some point I’d like to move this python code over to my C version and then setup a page to give anyone the ability to make thumbnails but, since each running script requires its own Gecko engine i’m afraid i’ll kill myself performance wise.
Update
This little project was the beginning of a long journey, I have a webpage thumbnail service now with an API, if you want to do something similar check it out.
That works pretty good. I would love to be able to do that myself. Can you email the script when you get it finished or available for others to use?
Thanks.
Don Laur
At some point I’ll be doing a GPL release of the C version that also creates pdfs (well ps files actually you combine it width ps2pdf for the pdf part. But I need to work on packaging it yet since its kinda of a pain to hack makefiles to get a compile to work.
Great Idea !! We’ve been looking for something to make website’s screenshot for a long time!
Well done, it’s really beautiful !
And sure all the PHP community will love it if you can distribute this script. Anyway good luck for the future…
Looks neat! I’m looking forward to the release of your c source.
You aren’t able to do those shots headlessly by chance?
You can do anything that needs X headless, lookup xvfb. But if you mean without an X server installed thats a no.
I have no clue when i’ll have time to work on this code again. If someone is looking for the code give me an email and i’ll see what i can get around for you.
Is there any way to capture a website’s screenshot using php?
You need actual web browser code to take the screenshot. Though you can control that external process from PHP.
hi, do you have free copies of your code in PHP?.. Coz im looking for some possible codes for that.. can you help me?
The thumbnail code isn’t written in PHP
Joshua,
Would love to get the code and see if we can complete it. Let me know!
Sean:
Send me an email and will chat about it, I should be able to get you some access to the code
Hi Joshua,
i am curious to see some of your code to do the screenies. I have made my mind up to that a lot of times but no clue for a solution.
Would be nice to hear from you.
Hello,
I could privide you host for your scripts to make your service for free. If you interested let me know. As I understand it’s C program for linux and some files from Gecko. Am I right?
Hi folks, I’ve just finished the script that you are looking for - it’s a PHP script utilizing a C++ coded DLL. Check out http://www.artviper.net/tools.php or simply go to http://www.w3csites.com to see it in action. Pretty fast, output and capture size adjustable, snap the whole screen ( not only the browser specific visible part ), adjust quality etc.
Have fun
Frank
Hi
Its very good. Can you email me original php script for building thumbnail of websites.
Thanks
- Binu
Great script
Could you email us or provide it by download on your website ?
Thank you…
I’m sorry to disappoint you guys, but the script is not gpl in a common way - you can use it for free, but the source and the dll keeps on our own - for this purpose set up - server.
If you use it, it would be nice if you could place a backlink to http://www.artviper.net.
hai i have done it as desktop application.
you can give list of webpage urls.
it can save all webpage images in you selected folder wiht your selected siges.
you can contact me at somala_pratap@yahoo.co.in.
thnks
pratap
[...] So about 11 months (wow that long time ago, feels like last month) I used some code I had lying around to make some thumbnails of all the planet php blogs. Work priorities has finally allowed me to work on that code base again, and I was able to get things up to a usable state. [...]
Hi !
it is a good work, can i have the script ?
Kind regards,
There are a lot of free services out there whom has free website thumbnails services like:
http://www.alexa.com
http://www.websitethumbnails.net
…google it…
Read following tutorial about different approaches to automating making website thumbnail/snapshot.
http://www.zubrag.com/articles/create-website-snapshot-thumbnail.php
Alexa does not offer the thumbnails for free anymore
I found this software
PageVisualize Website Image Capture SDK
http://www.pagevisualize.com/
Does anybody know any other similar software?
I found that the best service for thumbnails is given by girafa.com, their thumbnails are the most updated and they have a free service.
[...] Opera, or Konqueror support a background mode of operation. Others have succeeded, however. In his Planet-PHP Website Thumbnails entry from 2005, J Eichorn describes using Mozilla in just such a [...]
does Alexa offer the thumbnails for free anymore?