Alternative to Alexa and Thumbshots.com

[josthomelim]

Use http://www.w3snapshot.com.

[Commic]

As a solution to the paid thumbs, I would suggest that every webmaster makes the thumbs of his website available in the root of his own website. Create f.i 3 different sizes and call them thumbnail120x60.png

Every directory website can then just include the path to the thumb and include it with the link in the directory.
There is no need to ask for thumbs as the naming of the thumbs is standard.
Network traffic is payed for by the concerning domain.

A small local utility to create and even upload those thumbs to the server would be nice but not necessary.
Every CMS or Directory software should have such a function standard included.

I wonder why this isn't already in place on the web?

[cleoni]

I modified the code and the images url seem okay, but probably at girafa's found out about this unhautorized use.... it does not work anymore.


Any alternatives?

[cleoni]

Found myself a good alternative:

http://www.websnapr.com/

See a working implementation on my site:

www.forumfactory.it

Cheers

[george2177]

I have tested a lot of tools a site sites thumbnail generators to use with a pligg (digg style sms) site but I think that http://www.megasnaps.com is the best for this use. His free web site to image page, create a image of the whole html page, and offers a cropped options too to be downloaded.

The website thumbnails generator service are a good option for any type of web sites, offers a full page and custom sizes for the cheaper price tha I have found. I do a great instalation with 'facebox' (jquery), by clicking on a small image it open a larger one 'facebook style' image with a full size snapshot looks great!.

[subedeus]

ThumbShots does not work for me. The thumbs are not created even after days. I am now using the free thumbnails of www.snap.com and they look great.

Disabling ThumbShots at the Admin panel did only partly disable it. I had to remove the class="url" from the div tags in the following .tpl files:
\templates\common\featured-listing-display.tpl
\templates\common\partner-listing-display.tpl
\templates\common\regular-listing-display.tpl
\templates\common\sponsored-listing-display.tpl

I made the following modification in these four files (commented out the first line and added the second line) to make the snap.com popup work for the links in the listings pages:

<!--<div class="url">{$listing.url}</div>-->
<div><a href="{$listing.url}" target="_blank" style="color: #06C; font-style: italic; font-size: 0.9em;">{$listing.url}</a></div>

After this I registered at www.snap.com and added it's single line of javascript to the "Google Analytics" field of the "Configuration - Miscellanious" Admin page.

Lastly I added the class="snap_noshots" to the "eSyndiCat Directory Software" link in the footer to prevent the snap.com popup for this link:
\templates\cleancss\footer.tpl

<div class="copyright">&copy; {$smarty.server.REQUEST_TIME|date_format:"%Y"} Powered by <a class="snap_noshots" href="http://www.esyndicat.com/">eSyndiCat Directory Software</a></div>