Website Thumbnails

[digitalpoint]

I was bored this morning, so now user's profiles show a thumbnail of their website (if it's known).

Funny how mine isn't known. :)

But to see an example, here are a few user profiles that are known:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=158
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=29
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=24
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=61
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/member.php?u=211

- Shawn

[Such Great Heights]

I was bored this morning, so now user's profiles show a thumbnail of their website (if it's known).
this is an awesome feature. it's little things like this that make people want to be apart of your forum. A+

I saw it in Compar's profile and was jealous, then I saw where you get it from and noticed I can't just give them a thumbshot of my page.

do you just have to wait for them to take a thumbshot of your page?
anyway to speed that up that you know of?

-jealous

[jarvi]

I was bored this morning...

Shawn, next time this happens give me a call. I have a list of things longer than my arm that I am trying to do...

[digitalpoint]

No idea how they decide to update it. It appears to be based on DMOZ data, but I'm in DMOZ, so that can't be all of it (since I have none for digitalpoint.com).

It does seem to happen pretty quickly though, since I added it this morning, and now I have a thumbnail (which I didn't this morning).

- Shawn

[hulkster]

This is pretty nifty - for those that didn't do a view source, Shawn is pulling the images from www.thumbshots.org (http://www.thumbshots.org)

I.e. for my www.komar.org page, the image to slurp in is http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.komar.org/

Their web page has an FAQ that talks about it - Very Very Cool - nice touch Shawn,
alek

P.S. You mentioned your thumbnail wasn't there this morning, but is now - wonder how that happened so fast?!? ;-)

[sarahk]

I'm impressed. Hadn't seen that site before and I got 3 out of 4 straight off. I imagine that if you call a site they haven't got you can expect to be indexed fairly quickly by them. Must find out their user_agent.

http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.pcpropertymanager.com
http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.propertyinvestor.info
http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://www.apia.org.nz
http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=http://bots.pcpropertymanager.com

[hulkster]

Must find out their user_agent.

Here's what their FAQ says about that:
Currently we use the standard Internet Explorer user-agent string.
We have yet to come up with a cooler name!

So without knowing the IP address, it would be difficult to know when/who scrapes you for this - does seem slightly odd they haven't come up with some sort of User Agent as this is being a good net-citizen.

alek

[sarahk]

I can id by IP address for Botspotter (http://bots.pcpropertymanager.com) where I know they use a vague user_agent so I emailed Thumbshots. My suggestion was just to have the "Thumbshots.org" as the user_agent which is relatively common practice, it doesn't have to be a fancy googlebot type name. Here's the reply...
Hi Sarah,

We have multiple servers hence multiple IPs.

As for the user-agent, we haven't decided what to call it. We would have to consult with our volunteers and engineers.
When we do find a name, we'll post it on the FAQ page.

Regards,

Thumbshots support.

[hulkster]

I can id by IP address for Botspotter (http://bots.pcpropertymanager.com) where I know they use a vague user_agent so I emailed Thumbshots. My suggestion was just to have the "Thumbshots.org" as the user_agent which is relatively common practice, it doesn't have to be a fancy googlebot type name. Here's the reply...

Pretty simple/logical suggestion on your part ... and also serves the purposes of clearly identifying where/what this really is, rather than the generic User Agent string. I'm really surprised they haven't allready done this ... or at least use that name, and say we might change it down the road - just good practice/manners to identify your Bots IMHO.

alek