website that generates thumbnails of websites

[liquidboy]

Hey,

Im playing around with an idea for a new website..

Its a website where people enter there favourite websites and thumbnails of the website get generated.

Im thinking of extending it to let people rank and comment on these websites etc etc..

What do people think of the idea?

ps. heres the proof of concept website...

Rip my page bitch! (http://www.liquidloungepeople.com/)

[ThomasB]

takes a while to load, ah, cool simple idea, dont like the black, get some more typography goin in there.

[nevetS]

You will get a ton of usage by people building thumbnails for directories if the site gets to be well known. It may not be worth it because of the cpu usage + the bandwidth allocation - especially if it's just one person or a bot hitting you with thousands of requests.

I've thought about doing the same kind of thing and at least with my ideas for implementation I just couldn't justify the potential problems with administration against the time to develop and the server utilization. Of course if you have a group of machines and you could queue up the webshots, that would help, but you still have the problem with people sending your browser to not-so-friendly sites and having to re-deploy netscape or firefox regularly. All problems you can get around given time and a little bit of money, but still a hard project to justify. Cool idea though - I think the design is pretty cool. I agree with Thomas - some different fonts for the logo will probably do you some good. Is it functional? I'm not getting any thumbs. And I never even thought about implementing it on a windows box. I would think that could get very resource intensive.

[liquidboy]

thanks guys ... great comments... its just a little project that im working out what to do with..

Im gonna change the font of the logo and get rid of the black (maybe change all blacks to rich orange), ill see how it looks after the changes


It should work, it just takes a little while for the thumbs to generate (about 30 seconds if the queue isnt large)


The actual Process is :

4 seconds - request comes in from the web and gets written into an access
database

1 second - image is taken from the que of links

10 seconds - page is loaded into image capture software and picture is taken

5 seconds - high res image is converted into 10 other formats (including a thumbnail)

5 seconds - image is ftped to the web server and the access database is updated with completed work

[nevetS]

You should check for an existing image before trying to re-create one. You'll probably get a ton of requests for google and yahoo when people want to see how it works. I've tried waiting for yahoo, but it never comes back.

[liquidboy]

OOOOPS soorry it wasnt working for firefox (had a style in that was stuffing up in firefox, im an ie person by trade).. Fixed now

BETA ... gotta luv that word!

Ill let people put the links in regardless of if it exists or not, ill work out later the business rules around duplicate sites.. Im have no idea what to do with this site, probably bench it !

[liquidboy]

Hi people...

made some changes... is there too much red??(click on an image to see what i mean)


Web Bitch (http://www.liquidloungePeople.com)

thanks

[Sheetal Dadhwal]

i liked your baisc idea and NO i did not think that there was too much red used

[liquidboy]

Hey guys what do you think of the 2 new features ive added..

1) a yahoo yui slider that lets the user minimise the size of thumbs
2) a digg scrapper that will scrape all the latest technology articles and present them as thumbs to the user (still work under progress but the idea is there)...

Rip that page Bitch (http://www.liquidloungePeople.com)

[websitesbuilt]

I love the idea, I mean I really like it. A directory based off that or a service for screen captures could do very well. The way its used now I don't have a use for it, but something like I mentioned above I think might do very well.

If I could have a site make screen captures for me, and use it a directory, I would make countless submissions....

[sarahk]

I feel so old - I have real problems visiting a page with Bitch all over it. I guess if youngies are your target market then you can afford to lose people like me.

Ouch, where on top of it, give us a minute(takes that long to generate the pic)!should readOuch, we're on top of it, give us a minute (takes that long to generate the pic)!

I'm looking for a service that will let me take shots of internal pages. I want to make the call for the pages once a month and cache them locally - giving a link back to you on every page where the image is used. If that sounds feasible to you please let me know.

[liquidboy]

yeah im looking at making a couple of sites based on "auto website image capturing". This is just one of them..

Im currently creating another one which won't have bitch in the name :-) . Its going to be a free "private galleries" setup where you can generate all your own personal webpages as much as you want. Its going to be exposed as a soap webservice and you have the option of downloading the pics as a zipped up file.

SarahK thats probably the service you can use! And again its totally free.

That will be up in a couple of days, pm me your name and ill update people when its available!

[Rod]

Good work liquidboy. I'll be interested in the non-bitch site. Slap the bitch is a metaphor with nasty connotations.

[liquidboy]

Sorry guys for the delay, its takena while to add the private galleries section..

It will be up tomorrow and to those that pm'ed me ill begin setting your accounts tomorrow.

Anyone else just pm me and ill message you too.

Thanks again for your feedbacks

[Daniel Malone]

Most people these days use Alexa for directory website thumbnails.

[sarahk]

Alexa doesn't do internal pages and you can't request a refresh whenever you want.

There's room for a competitor to step in here.

[BFTUK]

Nice idea, although it does'nt appear to work for me!

[liquidboy]

unfortunately bftuk it takes around 10-30 seconds to generate and transfer the thumb...

It does work but as mentioned above the image takes time to render then the page needs to reload (every minute) to show the new thumb..

If you leave the screen on then eventually the page renders with the new thumbs

A private gallery (free for DP users) will allow you to insert multiple urls at once and it will render over time all the urls.. The gallery also has zipp tools to allow you to download the thumbs (thanks sarahk for the great idea)

[JosefV]

I was looking for that service before, great idea.

[InfoBlueBook]

Very nice job! Can you link the images to open in a new window?

[liquidboy]

yeah... it currently opens in the top of the page and from there it give you extra options (including opening in a new page etc)...

The private galleries has more features like
1) importing from your favourites or from a csv list
2) exporting the generated thumbs into a zip file
3) multiple galleries for specific purposes (like people that have directories and want to generate thumbs for them..

If you want to be in the trials for the private galleries just let me know, its free for dp users!

[liquidboy]

What do people think of my use of slidders in the "digg in pics" section.

Thanks people for you feedback

And a great thanks to the small group of heavy users of my private galleries, keep the feedback comming.

[sarahk]

Hi

I tried to submit using curl but didn't seem to work and didn't have time to debug... ;)

I'd like to have this scenario

- submit via curl or fgets or whatever
- get an id back
- then either link using the id or collect the image using the id after a pre-agreed delay (to give the generator time)
- link back to you using approved seo link

might that be possible? because your service so far is just what I need.

(although the squidoo page didn't work...)

[liquidboy]

Thanks Sarahk... im investigating curl now (actually looking into libcurl) ill get back to you when ive developed what your asking for. (doesnt sound hard what you want)..

l8r

[liquidboy]

Hey sarahk...

I just added a new way to import urls via using cURL.

In the private galleries if you go into the "import a list of url's" theres a new option called "use cUrl to submit URL's". It gives you information on how to import urls using cURL into your private gallery.

Let me know if that doesnt meet your needs :)

[liquidboy]

hope that was a compliment coolme :)

took me a minute to figure out that name, straight and to the point!

Im adding a new feature next week that makes thumbs for your rss feeds and its called "RipThatFeed" :)

[liquidboy]

Added a "home" tab that people are defaulted to. Is it a nice landing page that explains what the site is about? And does it load in a reasonable amount of time..

Also added a "secret projects" tab with a list of projects im working on, is there too much graphics on there? does it take too long to load up?

Also worked on getting it to look good across Firefox, IE and Opera..

Thanks again for your comments guys..

ps. if anyones interested ill be releasing alot of the code that generates thumbs and the site itself as opensource in a couple of weeks. Mind you its all .NET running on msaccess database using .net2.0 and webservices

Liquidboy

[liquidboy]

Hey guys,

Im half way through building a new piece of functionality around online file storage, like word/pdf/powerpoint documents, clips whatever. I know everyones doing it but i thought id have a go at doing it differently..

Its in the "secret projects" area and its called "megaupload ripped"...

I rekon im about 60% done on it but im looking to get peoples opinions..
Anyone that has time please feel free to go in and create your own free gallery..

Thanks again to those that continually give me feedback..

ps. next week ill start releasing the code behind the site and all the secret projects under open source (including the thumbnail generator and the digg like forms) so stay tuned for that...

Regards liquidboy

[Xitanto]

I like it! Can I hotlink images?

[liquidboy]

by hotlink do you mean link to the generated images from your websites (steal my bandwidth)? If so then yes..

I dont mind at all, create yourself a private thumbnail gallery and start thumbing all the websites you want ...

l8r

[liquidboy]

Thx... ive been building sites for years all with the goal of revenue generation... This is the first one im doing purely for enjoyment..


Im taking a break from making revenue generating sites and im gonna spend most of my energy on this site, building cool free tools for webmasters and making the web a "beautiful" place.. Too many ugly sites out there..

ps.. my first open source submittion is going up this weekend (aussie time - 3 days away) , in the open source section im gonna show people how to

1) build "Digg" like forms - all the forms on my site are "digg" styled forms, i loved them so much i ripped them and im gonna try to get other webmasters to use the templates.

2) the source code to how i store a sites visitors and translate them into regions/flags - a demo of this can be seen on the top right a page , it shows my recent 5 visitors and there flags of origin

3) the source code form my comments widget - across my site i use the same widget that lets vistors comment. Its a cut and paste widget that any webmaster can install in minutes (given the right hosting setup) and have running..

All the widgets i create can also be hosted by my site and iframed in another webmasters site.. If you have websites and you want "comment" features or "last visitor flags" features then i can host it for you and all you'll need to do is iframe the code into your sites..

check back in a couple of days to see what source code i release..

l8r
l8r

[sarahk]

Hey, just thought I'd share a screenshot of a site I'm working on - internal site monitoring but the screenshots add as an extra window and using the curl option (but infact fopen worked just fine) I get the image too. Very easy, very cool.

[liquidboy]

Cool. very nice... i was thinking of building a site monitoring widget as well.. Guess i dont need to anymore..

If your providing that as a service to other webmasters, ill be happy to put a link on my site to it.. That will definetely be useful for others!

ps. thx for using my service...

[sarahk]

Yes, I will be offering it but on a free and lowkey basis. I have some work to do on some of the scripts first and I'll be moving it to a new server (purely to have it separate from the sites I'm monitoring).

Right now you can sign up, add your sites but the emails will be a bit wonky but the basics are in place. I want to add more functionality though.

Sarah

[liquidboy]

Ive just ripped the yahoo "quick tours".. Ill be putting it up in the open source area this weekend..

If anyone has some time for reviewing please goto my site and on the home page the "quick tours" panel will drop down letting you take a quick tour.. Its just a concept demo but would like to know what people think..

ps. i think its awesome and id like to see it on alot of other peoples sites (just like the digg forms i ripped early last week)..

pss. thanks to all those that are giving great feedback..

Regards LiquidBoy

[sarahk]

looks good and I'll be interested to see how you have it working for us

quick note: there should be their

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3921&stc=1&d=1156304526

plus how do I refresh a thumbnail in my private gallery (or from a remote site). I don't want to have to keep requesting it - your db will get chokka

[liquidboy]

let me get back to you tonight (sydney time) with a solution for refreshing... both from the private gallery and via url request..

And thanks for the pick-up with my spelling... (ps. trying to package up the "quick tours" is harder than expected)

ps. i also subscribed to your service, let me know if you ever plan on offering it to the general public and ill throw a link from my home page..

... liquidboy

[kovacs]

This is really cool stuff.

[Alis]

there is a software allows you do to this in manual.

[sarahk]

there is a software allows you do to this in manual.Which manual?

[liquidboy]

Im really wanting to just put the thumb generation software in the opensource area but its such dirty code im embarrased. It does the job thou!

ps. for all those that wanted the source code, appologies for taking so long. If you really want it in the dirty form then pm me and ill send you a copy. Remember its predominatnly c#...

Ive also just added the "visitors flags" code in the opensource, so if you ever wanted to know how to turn a visitors ip address to there country of origin's flag then check it out (ps. its not 100% guaranteed that the visitors ip is there address due to proxies and service providers backbones etc, but its still a good indicator for the most part)

I'm still working on packaging the "yahoo quick tours", its so damn hard working out how to package that. It would make a great vehicle for sitewide adverts or even simple training sessions (like powerpoint presentations). Again if you really want this code then pm me and ill send it to ya, it makes heavy use of the yahoo user interface (YUI) and javascript/dhtml!

Rip That Page (http://www.RipThatPage.com)


Regards LiquidBoy