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Thumbshots™
are screenshots of web pages in thumbnail sizes.
Integrating thumbshots in your directory enable your
users to instantly visualize any web page before navigating
to the site. Thumbshots are instant advertisements of web sites. We empower the
next generation of search engines and directories by providing preview functionality.
Yes, the Simple Solution supports any HTTP/HTTPS URL, both dynamic and static URLs. If we don't have the thumbshot for a URL, we will automatically generate it usually within a few minutes. Please note that certain thumbshots may not be available if the webmaster placed a robot restriction, the URL does not point to a valid HTML page or that site is not reachable.
The Simple Solution is designed to meet the needs of small to medium traffic sites such as directories, bookmark sites, web review sites or desktop software. The Enterprise Solution is a custom solution for large sites requiring hundreds of millions of thumbshots per month.
Thumbshots.org is an open and non-profit initiative. Giving free thumbshots is our way of contributing back to the Internet community. Volunteers, sponsors and donations make this cause possible. The thumbshots.org is limited to the URLs in the DMOZ.org directory whereas the commercial solution covers all the URLs in the world.
The short answer is you shouldn't need to. The Simple Solution covers all the URLs. You'll need to do a bit of programming because the free thumbshots and Simple Solution use two separate sets of codes. Use the free Thumbshots.org code for links appearing in DMOZ.org directory and use the Simple Solution code for all your other links. You can find out which links belong in the DMOZ.org by reading the information from the freely downloadable DMOZ.org dump.
To determine the appropriate plan, find out from your traffic logs to determine the hits you have. This should give you an idea of your needs. If you have chosen a plan that is not up to your needs, you may upgrade your plan or buy additional usage during the month.
Absolutely! You may switch to any plan at anytime. You will have to pay the setup fee for the new plan. New plans will only start on your next billing month.
You can always purchase additional thumbshots in fixed blocks. This option is available in your account.
Thumbshots Simple Solution is simple. It lets you pre-pay your thumbshots in advance with your credit card. The setup fee and monthly fee are charged at the beginning of each billing month. At anytime, you may buy more usage for the current month. If you change a monthly plan, you may be charged with a nominal set up fee.
Your billing month is the day of the month you signed up for the service. For example, if you signed up on Jan. 18, your billing months are Feb. 18, Mar. 18 and so on. Should your billing month fall on a day that does not exist in a calendar year, it will be taken on the next following day of the month. For example, if you signed up on Feb. 29 and it does not exist for this calendar year then your billing month will be rolled over to Mar. 1 and resume on Apr. 29, May 29 and so on.
We do not have a refund policy. We have made thumbshots very affordable and low-risk for you. There is no long-term commitment and you can pay with your credit card. You can cancel your plan for the next following month with 7 days notice if you do not wish to continue.
Thumbshots will work on any web browser (IE, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, AOL, etc.) supporting JPEG images. Users do not require any special software.
After completing the sign up form and adding a few lines of HTML codes, you will be able to deploy thumbshots within a few hours.
We provide an end-to-end turnkey solution. You don’t have to provide any hardware, software or bandwidth resources. We take care of everything for you! You shouldn't need to cache or store the thumbshots. Doing so may violate the terms of the agreement.
We are committed to provide a What You See Is What You Get experience. That means we ensure that the thumbshots are up-to-date. Our robot updates the thumbshots on periodic basis. The robot determines whether a particular site should be updated more or less frequently depending on the activity of that site. Most sites hardly change or the change is too subtle for the eye to detect (e.g. the change of a date on a page is not visible to the eye). There are several knobs we can tweak. With time and experience, the robot will adjust to optimally match a site's activity.
You are not allowed to serve any advertisements in place of thumbshots or the area intended for thumbshots. Please contact us for Enterprise Solution if you want to serve ads.
We take care of everything. You do not need to add any machine or bandwidth. There is no change to your backend system. You continue to host your web pages as before. Thumbshots are pulled from our servers directly by the end users.
Integrating thumbshots into your site is easy and takes a few minutes. After signing up, you will receive a short instruction on how to integrate thumbshots into your site. You do not need to add any machine, software or bandwidth.
All you have to do is add a few lines of HTML code to your page with the URL for the thumbshot you want to show. If we don't have the thumbshot matching your URL, we will automatically generate it usually within a few minutes. It's that simple!
For example, to generate a thumbshot of http://www.yahoo.com, the HTML code looks like this:
<IMG src="http://thumbshots.com/image?url=http%3A//www.yahoo.com">
To generate a thumbshot of http://www.cnn.com, the HTML code looks like this:
<IMG src="http://thumbshots.com/image?url=http%3A//www.cnn.com">
If you encounter any difficulties during the sign up process, please e-mail us at
with the exact details of the error message you received before you proceed further. Please do not send your credit card information by e-mail.
The Simple Solution currently supports thumbshots of 120W x 90H pixels or 200W x 150H pixels only. For custom dimensions, please see our Enterprise Solution.
The default thumbshot is only about 3kB in size and will download quickly even on 56kbps modems. In fact, thumbshots are helpful for users running on slow modem because users see where they are going and do not waste their time clicking to undesirable sites.
Yes, you can serve thumbshots to multiple sites with one account provided that you own and operate these sites. However, you are not allowed to resell thumbshots.
A valid thumbshot request is defined as a hit. If your page has 10 thumbshots, then you will be using 10 hits.
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