This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

WPF-WebThumb

Description

WPF-WebThumb create thumbnails of any web page.

You can choice a free service between:

  1. bluga.net: you can register free of charge to have up to 100 thumbnails fetched per month; paying a fee this limit can be removed.

  2. PagePeeper may be use with no registration, but the thumbnail generated is branded with their logo; if you register you can get 100,000 shots/month with no logo.

  3. ShrinkTheWeb returns a not-cacheable image and requires registration, free service has limited IP access. (not reccomanded)

  4. ShrinkTheWeb2 returns a cacheable image and requires registration, very fast.

  5. WebToPicture is completely free, not requires registration nor is branded, but has very slow response time.

You can use a shortcode to place the thumbnail images anywhere in your posts or articles.
A multi-widget is also available.
It is possible to select the size of each thumbnail and some other options.
Using a suitable template, may click on the thumbnail to go to the site and/or display a bigger thumbnail, etc.

Currently in beta, works with PHP 5.2.12 or higher: please report any issue you find, and any feature you want. I’ll try to fix the firsts and to implement the seconds!

Very close to a first release (no know bugs, if found any please ask me for support!)

Info and more samples at WPF-WebThumb developer’s site

Screenshots

  • Setup WPF-WebThumb
  • Some web site images fetched by WPF-WebThumb

Installation

  1. Unzip and place the ‘webthumb’ folder in your ‘wp-content/plugins’ directory.
  2. Activate the plugin.
  3. Click the ‘WPF-WebThumb’ link in the WordPress setting menu, configure it in the Settings tab and save (step REQUIRED).
  4. Use a shortcode [wpf-webthumb] (or legacy [webthumb]) to display thumbnail. See Help tab for more info.
  5. You can also drag-and-drop one or more widget.

NOTE:

  • You need to register at bluga.net webthumb API service in order to obtain the APIKEY needed by the plugin. The registration is free.

  • No registration is needed by the plugin to use PagePeeper service.

  • You need to register at ShrinkTheWeb service in order to obtain the ACCESSKEY needed by the plugin. The registration is free.

FAQ

Is it free?

Yes! The plugin is free. You can register for free and use with no charge the service to grab the thumbnails at one of the services, that are also free.

The plugin is not working! What can I do?

In the 0.x version there is a ‘debug’ feature activated that generates hidden HTML code.

In your browser rigth click and ‘display source code’ or similar to view HTML, then search for ‘<!– start of WPF-WebThumb …’: here you can find useful info. There is one debug info for common includes and one for each image you try to display.

If you cannot fix, please send me copy of this code, or the URL of the page that is not working. You can use WP plugin support page. I’ll be happy to help you!

What webthumb API service should I use?

There are pros and cons for the possible choices:

  • bluga.net requires a registration, you have 100 free shots per month. More if you pay.

  • pagepeeper may be use with no registration, but the thumbnail generated is branded with their logo; if you register you can get 100,000 shots/month with no logo (this feature not implemented jet)

  • shrinktheweb is very fast but requires registration and clicking on the image redirect you to a intermediate page in shrinktheweb.com. The image caching is available only to premium account and is not implemented by the plugin.

  • shrinktheweb caching image is now available for free users too! Just use ‘shrinktheweb (img cache)’ option.

  • Web2Picture is completely free, but has very slow response time (hours? days?) if thumb does not exists. So it is add as an option before grab the thumbs with any other service.

What the ‘template’ parameter stay for?

It is possible to use predefined templates (see dir ‘templates’) or define a custom template to display the thumbnails. Just create webthumbs-n.html in ‘templates’ dir and refer to is as template=n (n is an integer!)

The predefined templates you can choice between are:

  • 0 : is just an <img /> tag with attributes src, alt, title, id

  • 1 : is a simple box with title on the top (if specified) and url in the bottom (if specified) and the thumbnail in the middle

  • 2 : is a small clickable box, useful to have many thumbnails on a row.

see examples at WPF-WebThumb developer’s site

Why have I a thumbnail with a question mark?

The plugin poll for an image ready, if it is not in about 1 minute it stops waiting and display a question mark image. Probably refreshing the page the image is then fetched.

Why have I a thumbnail with a PagePeeper logo only?

When you request a thumbnail to PagePeeper chances are that it is ready in seconds; if not you can retrieve it later, but in this case an image with PagePeeper logo only is returned and cached.

You should delete the cached image to retrieve the correct one.

How can I clear the cache?

You can delete or update file by file using the ‘Cache’ tab in settings pages, or you can directly browse your site at the directory specified by ‘thumbnails dir is:’.

Here you can find images with names that are ‘close’ 😉 to the domain names you thumbnailed: if you delete one or more of them a new cached image will be saved next time the thumbnail is requested.

Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

Contributors & Developers

“WPF-WebThumb” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Translate “WPF-WebThumb” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

0.27

  • WP4.0
  • Url for WebToPicture changed to api.thumbcreator.com
  • PagePeeper updated to API V2: free.pagepeeker.com/v2/

0.26

  • renamed

0.25

  • MAXGRABS=3

0.24

  • css and js register and enqueue, tested with WP 3.5.2

0.23

  • ‘&’ char managed, tested with WP 3.5-beta2

0.22

  • not-dos chars excluded

0.21

  • longer wait for bluga.net, only 3 new grabs/page a time

0.20

  • Tested for WP 3.4.2, small changes

0.19

  • widget class added

0.18

  • max two images refreshed from cache for each page call

0.17

  • add Web2Picture option (completely free, but very slow response time if thumb does not exists)

0.16

  • Shorter timeouts; if timeout display ‘?’ image, try grabb again on refresh

0.15

  • add size dimension to file name; some fixes and reworks

0.14

  • fixes

0.13

  • set cache expire days

0.12

  • wait up to 1 min for PageKeeper image ready
  • poll for ShrinkTheWeb image ready, but still no errors managed

0.11

  • fixes

0.10

  • added user-defined templates
  • fix not-existent functions

0.9

  • Updated files pot and js.

0.8

  • Refresh grabbed thumbnails, some defaults fixed.

0.7

  • Preview cached thumbnails; can delete each of them. Tabbed setup navigation

0.6

  • ShrinkTheWeb cached images service added (new free service add by the provider!!)

0.5

  • ShrinkTheWeb service added (not cacheable images)

0.4

  • PagePeeper service added
  • default size is now selectable

0.3

  • generate better html, link by javascript
  • parameter template=0 generate just ref for img tag

0.2

  • added language support and it_IT translation
  • added default image if thumbnail cannot be created or retrieved
  • fix when the thumbnail cannot be created

0.1

  • Initial release of plugin.
  • Please test and report any issue you find, and any feature you want. I’ll try to fix the firsts and to implement the seconds!