Screenshot Server [v.2.1]
by Fanatical Dev

Fanatical Dev's screenshot server is a simple screenshot-taking server. All you need do is provide an url (please encode the url, width and height are optional). The image will be queued, captured, generated to the required size and cached. Check out the following example (click here to view the example):

http://screenshots.fanaticaldev.com/?u=http://fanaticalvps.com/&w=440&h=200

Examples

The server outputs high quality well-resized images:

You can try it yourself by typing in an url here:

Usage

This screenshot server is designed for personal use only. The images can be linked to from any forums or websites. If you wish to use our screenshot server for commercial use, please contact me.

Screenshot Info

Screenshots are taking using a webkit-based browser. Most plugins should work, but of course there is no guarantee on this. The default size is 440px by 200px. The images have no watermarks and are all png format.

Reloading a Screenshot

Anyone can force-reload a screenshot for a certain website & size. All you need do is visit an url such as:

http://screenshots.fanaticaldev.com/?u=http://fanaticalvps.com/&w=440&h=200&reload=1

Note: screenshots less than a week old won't be reloaded.

Developers: You may also specify a "return_url" in the query string above, used to redirect people back to a web-app or whatever:

http://screenshots.fanaticaldev.com/?u=http://fanaticalvps.com/&w=440&h=200&reload=1&return_url=http://yummymarks.com/

Note: the default return url is back to the image (most likely a "loading" image)

Developers

If anyone is using our screenshot server in some kind of web application or other usage, I'd love to know, please get in touch: nick@fanaticaldev.com.

About

This screenshot server is run by Nick at Fanatical Dev. I also have a blog called Pointless Ramblings if you're into that kind of thing. Current projects include yummymarks (the reason this server exists) & Fanatical VPS.

How does it work?

All I've done is throw a PHP & MySQL queue system on top of a wonderful screenshot taking program for Linux called CutyCapt.

Every minute up to 10 new sites are captured, and any current generations are processed. The process is as follows:

  1. Image requested:
    1. Image exists: image is served, exit
    2. Image doesn't exist, but a capture of the site does, added to generation queue (unless it exists), exit loading image
    3. Image doesn't exist, nor does the capture, added to capture queue (unless it exists), exit loading image
  2. Every minute:
    1. 10 images captured from the capture queue (and then moved into the generation queue)
    2. All images in the generation queue are generated